Next Steps Planning III
Before going to work on the last round of planning activities the group gathered together and discussed what they wanted to work on next. The following is that conversation. The results of the work the group completed follows - and you can use the links here as short-cuts to the report out of each group's work.
Conversation
Michael: We have an opportunity to do one more round of work. We’ve been talking about next steps, the future, what we want to look like and what we want to do. Some groups have done some summary and synthesis work.
How many times a year do you all get together? I was thinking that we should take advantage of the opportunity to be together.
There are some groups that I can imagine for the next round. The timeline team would be one.
Bryan: There are six new topics that need to be incorporated into the timeline. Then the group needs to stand back and take a look at it and see if it makes sense?. Is it too frontloaded? Are we trying to do too much? Or is it backloaded? Are we procrastinating? So we need to do some level of prioritization.
Michael: There may also be conversations we need to have about improvements that we could make. There could be a group to look at this.
Do you have anything that we should work on this afternoon?
Let’s have a conversation in pairs.
[Group discusses in pairs]
What are the conversations we absolutely need to have in order to be successful today?
-- What needs to be fixed and how we’re going to fix it.
-- I don’t go outside my realm and look at the other schools web sites. It would be good to have an open forum, a system-wide of knowing what’s going on throughout the four schools.
-- The communication is lacking and we need to fix it.
The magic in systems is the interaction of the parts. In a system, no part acts in isolation. The magic in making them work is to optimize the interaction between the parts. Every system has communication issues.
Many organizations do not think about the system as a system. They think only about the parts. When you think about the system, the importance of communication jumps an order of magnitude. We’re still figuring things out and we’re not there yet, but while you’re working it out it’s often good to over-communicate. You have to ex[and your circle at least one or two spheres out. Not just the people you work with, or at the same grade level, or at the same school. After you do that for some period of time you’ll find the right balance.
-- What change would be implemented in the fall?
-- Each person has to think about what they can do to improve the system that we have. Everyone has to take an initiative. We all have to be stronger to make the system work.
Would it be valuable to have some reflection time individually?
-- We have to make sure that teachers do not get burned out. Maybe a group could work on support for the teachers.
-- There are also kids that are stressed. The idea of a support system for students would be a good topic also.
Please go put your name in the box that you want to work in.
Report Outs
The issues that we identified are:
- Usage of personal days and sick days. The more senior staff may not need as many sick days as personal days. So could we combine them and call them “leave days.”
- There is too much additional duty in general between prep and distance. Could we create a rotational system so there is more repeat courses in a year? That would reduce the number of different classes that each teacher teaches. If we reduce the frequency of the offer it might increase demand, and allow the teacher to develop new classes.
-- Some people thrive on extra duties, but maybe administration should not assign more than 2 extra duties without the agreement of the teacher. Other activities are robbing time from instruction. To be able to sustain the marathon, we think that adjustments may be necessary.
We decided to look at what some schools have but others schools do not have. We have small schools, tutoring, after school programs.
These are the suggestions we developed:
- Home room help, where we could use the time more efficiently rather than having idle time.
- We feel that it’s really important to have talk time with students. Ten minutes each week with the guidance counselor, just to le the kids each have a time to talk.
- We would like to see a school wide bullying program,
- We heard a lot of disussion about discipline. There is a need for a school-wide discipline plan, and for us to follow the plan, so everyone is on the same page. When there is consistency for the students they know what is expected of them.
- We would like to see after school programs to help kids to get the their school work done.
- We think it would be helpful to the students to develop study skills.
- Parents could volunteer after school.
- We would like to bring back the parent-teacher organization to have parents help.
We came up with these ideas:
- A blog site with a moderator for students to use.
- An enhanced advisor-advisee programs.
- We think it would be good to have time off between sports seasons to slow things down a little bit for the kids who need it or want it.
- We would like to see study skills training.
- We should implement iChat so that we can contact teachers who may be out of the building.
- There should be a counselor on all the time, or the student should have the ability to reach them.
- We would like to see tutors and peer tutors.
- We thought that there should be scheduled tech training about 4 times a year.
- We would like to see a full time tech person in each school. Being a tech trained I know how important that is.
- During the school time there should be a specific communication time, maybe from 8 to 8:30, so teachers are available for communication at a set time each day.
- We would like to see a defined system for distance learning so it is more standardized.
- There should be a primary contact list for each student in all schools for distance learning. When parents are divorced, for example, we don’t know who to contact for discipline issues and for praise.
- We would like to see a chain of command for teaching other schools. Who do you go to?
- Planning time should be proportional to the amount of prep. Planning time seems to be an issue for everyone, and we need more of it.
- We want to make sure that everyone has an AIM account.
If you don’t have an iChat account, you should have one.
We’re putting a list together of everyone in all the schools.
- Several ideas focus on having a centralized bulletin board in each district to improve communication between staff. There should be one staff calendar that you could check to see the agenda for the day, or deliverables that day. An office staff person could be responsible for it.
- There is not a centralized list of students absent from school, that gets to the leaders of all activities that gets to all schools and all buildings. So that if Newcastle class is gone early, and you are a Laurel teacher you could get that information.
- Friday meeting minutes would be on the clickable calendar. We would have teacher-partner to find out if you miss a meeting.
- We want to make sure that there is not a lack of communication with the community. We want to make sure everyone knows.
- If the internet is down, use the intercom to contact people.
- Scheduling and calendar, as was already mentioned. We need to all have the same calendar.
- We thought of a weekly email that lists what’s going one each week.
- Parents and teachers of special needs kids need extra communication.
- We wanted to limit class size to 20 across the board.
- We should offer a pre-training class for students so they know how they are to submit work to teachers, so they know how to handle their class work,etc.
- We need to continue the technology funding.
- The junior high schedule has problems in some schools.
- We need to standardize discipline at the receiving end of distance learning. We should provide APL training so people know how to handle discipline issues consistently.
- Instant communication is very helpful for everyone.
- Teachers are sometimes not available for distance learning students. They should have regular office hours so students know when to contact them.
- We think that we should limit the number in distance learning classes to 25.
- We should create a sign up sheet for the laptops to reserve a computer.
- Transportation for assignments should be made in a more timely manner. We should train the kids to submit documents electronically. Spend time with the staff to make sure they’re comfortable with what they’re being asked to teach.
- There should be more consistent use of APL, retraining of the correct behavior. We need to get everyone trained. Maybe we should offer a refresher course so we don’t have to send students to the office.
- There is some staff overload. Maybe we could redistribute the load.
- We need training for technology, an ongoing training so everyone can be comfortable.
- We should limit the number of distance classes per teacher. Some teachers can handle 6 or 7 classes, but some think that’s too many. We should let the teachers decide how many they should take on.
- We need to synchronize the school calendars. The administrators’ calendar is color coded, but to see the school calendars you have to go to the individual schools. We should have one calendar that is color coded for the schools.
- We would like to limit the number of students per class.
- We need to improve inadequate distance learning sites.
- We need to provide a proper contact person for all distance learning classes. That’s not happening right now. Sometimes people don’t know who to contact.
- We need to prepare students to know how to take online classes, in middle school especially.
- Some of the laptops that are used for testing are getting messed up when students borrow them. Maybe we can use deep freeze software to freeze the computers and make them work for test taking.
- Teachers would like to see the Master schedule before it is released to the students.
- In some classes we need updated textbooks, and some classes need textbooks.
Click here to download an Excel spreadsheet of the timeline.
We got about 1/3 of the way through our work.
In the spring 2008, we will:
• Clearly articulate the middle school model across all 4 communities
• Contact parents regarding combined sports teams (LC/C)(only football for W/N)
• Select text books, coordinate purchase cycles between 4 schools, make sure adequate #s of text, tools, materials
• Address scheduling, staffing, & facilities for MS model
• Address facility up=grades (all)
• Determine whether to use NROC
• Let communities know Coleridge 3rd grade to Laurel next year
• Investigate sharing teams (speech, x-country, 1-act, wrestling, golf)
Summer 2008
• Professional development - distance ed
• Incentive studies - for teachers with MAs, add endorsements
• Coordinate guidance programs - who teaches what / where?
Fall 2009
• APL training for paras
Click here to move on to the documentation from the next round of work.
© 2008 InnovationLabs LLC and the Coleridge, Laurel, Newcastle and Wynot School Districts
This process facilitated by InnovationLabs LLC.
