For the next 2 weeks you will have time to post a blog on you "community paper" or your "policy paper". In addition, you are expected to respond to another blog post. I am in the process of changing my email address so I will post the new email when it becomes available.
Also, I am planning visits for Tuesday, June 23rd. I will email a confirmation timeline to everyone soon so you know when I am coming to your campus.
I'll go first this week. From the syllabus, it looks like our community paper is about the way the composition of the community impacts the culture of the school. I think this will spark some interesting discussion since we teach and have taught in some very diverse areas.
ReplyDeleteI have spent my entire teaching career in CPS. However, I did preclinical observation hours in several schools including a New Trier feeder school in a 3rd grade class. I will never forget how I dreaded going to that weekly observation because I felt so useless. There were about 15 kids in that room all working independently on their projects and I went from kid to kid asking if anyone needed help. The all politely declined. The next block of observation hours I completed at a school that I eventually worked at that served kids from 6 buildings (no longer existant) in the Robert Taylor Homes. At that school, the 3rd graders literally embraced me. One girl told me she loved me after just one visit. They had so many needs: both social and academic. I didn't know where to start! I knew then and there that I wanted to work in a high-need area where I felt I could make more of a difference. I understand that kids have problems everywhere, but it felt like such a good fit at the time. As a teacher, we can see the effects of the environment on our students: whether they dodge bullets to get to school or their parents are pressuring them to get into an Ivy league school.
As administrators, I think that the culture of the schools where we work must be respected. We can't change what they are going through once they leave the school to to back to their homes, but we can show that we care and make a commitment to our stakeholders that we all want what is best for our students, no matter who they are and where they come from. Even the most drug-addicted parent wants their child to be a success in life and do better than they did.
So, what am I trying to say here? I guess that no matter where we work, we can never forget that no matter what challenges exist in the community, we have to remember why we are all there: for the kids.
I posted my community summary on the last blog. Sorry to have to make you guys refer back to it if interested.
ReplyDeleteAs always, Mary has shown her true spirit and passion for all children in her blog. That's our girl! I truly hope that throughout my career, I can live up to what Mary is talking about. Remembering why we chose to do what we do, even on days when that choice seems like a pretty dumb one. We all could have found careers doing something else, likely making more money and enduring less stress. But we were drawn to education because we know that all children need support, caring, learning, guidance, and opportunities to feel successful and triumphant. I want to believe that this will stay at the forefront of my mind each day that I work, but I know from experience already that this is not easy.
As an administrator, I hope to follow through on the commitment to remembering Mary's thoughts, and not let the paperwork, meeting, politics, difficult parents, or board members blur them. Kids come to us from all perspectives and backgrounds, and it is our mission to identify and understand the strengths in all of them and how these get tapped. Again, lofty aspirations, but no one said this would be easy.
Not surprising, I'm sure, but I am confused. I wrote the community paper already & think it was for last year's internship, so I am going to have this blog address the policy issue.
ReplyDeleteWhen thinking about the 2nd internship and how I could incorporate an interest of mine, I chose to meet with our Director of Personnel. We spent some time brainstorming potential areas of need and decided that I would research and provide recommendations about the attraction and retention of highly qualified special education staff for our district. As you know, I work in a special education co-op that serves our 20 member districts and many schools outside of our district. Nationally, the teacher shortage is increasing and while teacher shortages have consequences for regular education students, the consequences for special education students may be even more profound. In Illinois alone approximately 12% of special education teaching positions are filled by unqualified staff (with provisional certificates or waivers) or left vacant. Our district is often in the challenging position of needing to request certification waivers or leave a position unfilled.
With the special education teacher shortage, the IL pension debacle and the state of the economy colliding, districts are going to need to be creative and aggressive to attract and retain highly qualified staff. Some of the strategies that have been utilized are: developing university partnerships and creating paths and incentives for current teaching assistants; advertising the programs that IL has developed to provide financial assistance to those choosing to study special education; and spending more time with student teachers to potentially prep them for openings.
The work that we do is challenging and when you take the most behaviorally and emotionally compromised students and put them together, it can be hard to find staff willing to dedicate their career to this environment. At NSA, once we get high quality, appropriately certified, staff in the door,they tend to stay. In order to successfully manage the upcoming retirements, I think that our district needs to spend more time looking at the attraction piece.
This internship project has actually been interesting and I am planning to devote some time to recruitment, interviewing techniques and why staff choose to leave before presenting my recommendations. I believe that when we have good, qualified staff they not only increase student achievement, but contribute to the positive culture of our school and ultimately make NSA a better place to work.
After reviewing the outline for the policy paper, I am realizing that I am still in the beginning stages of my project. My current project is working with our Director of Personal Development and District Services to better understand the changing roles of our educational coaches with the need for RtI implementation within our district and our member districts which we serve. Though this is a part of the summer internship project, my commitment is truly to follow it through till at least the end of the upcoming school year. Through discussions with her and several of our District service coordinators there are concerns that the traditional roles of our support services staff are starting to blend and that the future responsibilities of the different backgrounds (psychologist, social workers, OT/PTs) are unclear in what part they will play in the new initiatives. The hope is to develop a better understanding of how the different skill sets can be used and more importantly communicated in a manner that allows staff to implement the changes necessary.
ReplyDeleteMy project is based on first helping to develop a job description that better reflects the new responsibilities that social workers will have in regards to RtI. Information from past focus groups and workshops have helped to identify the potential needs that social workers have in better understanding their responsibilities. Current research regarding the direction RtI is heading in our district and member districts will also help guide the development of this description. Along with the job description, I will also be working on developing a series of monthly meetings to help support our member districts social workers with understanding and implementing the changes necessary for them to be effective within their own school environments. Specifically looking at writing measurable goals and the use of different assessment tools to collect the data regarding specific interventions.
In researching this need for change, one aspect that our district is exploring is the correlation between RtI and Professional Learning communities. Though this is not directly related to the project I am working on, it is an underlying principal that our district is researching in its plans to work through the implementation process of the RtI initiatives. I as begin to gain more understanding of this concept I hope to be able to use it to help support the changes necessary for our staff to remain effective and feel valued in the rapidly changing landscape of education.
In response to Johnny's community bit that he posted last week, I share his concerns about the number of minoroty kids being sent to us, but also think it is interesting to see the type of kid that each district chooses to send. (I work with the 11th/12th graders & Johnny has the middle school kids, so the population of kids we see is often different). For example, the kids from one district are typically AFAM, credit deficient and older; kids from another district are typically heavily drug involved; further north kids are usually school refusals, eating disorders or self-injurious. My experience has been that each district has an underlying values system that dictates the type of student they refer to a therapeutic day school. Not necessarily wrong, but the patterns are interesting. Another pattern that I find thought provoking is the high number of adopted kids-in my class alone (11 kids) 5 of them are adopted. Attachment issues, early education dynamics, parent resiliency--these things all come to mind and I certainly wonder what the next 10-15 years will bring as the number of adoptions continues to increase.
ReplyDeleteIn response to Doug's blog on the changing roles of support staff due to RtI implementation, I can't help but respond. I just spent the entire week hosting "RtI Discussions" with each support group in my district trying to define their roles in RtI. (Doug I can't wait to see what your results are.)What a challenge process this was and will continue to be! One thing we know is that we have to accept that it will be forever changing and developing.
ReplyDeleteI just wish the research wculd clearly outline what the roles should be for each of these "Key Players". What I am finding is that because the roles are driven by the needs of student population, there just can't be a one-size-fits-all set-up or model we could all follow. However, as educators we are programmed to receive instructions and follow outlines... just tell me what to do so I an do it and do it well. We know that good teachers make student expectations clear. It is incredibly frustrating for staff not to know what role they play on the team. Furthermore, many staff members I spoke with this week talked about how much harder (not smarter) they worked this year trying to do interventions, data analysis, goal setting, etc on top of fulfilling their current traditional job descriptions. (And since the roles are not clearly defined people have now begun to question what other people are doing)
Doug you mentioned how important the manner in which we communicate is and that you're developing a series of monthly meetings to help support the staff. I believe that these will be the keys to successful implementation. You also identified the correlation between RtI and Professional Learning Communities and I couldn't agree more that these two go hand-in-hand. To remain effective and feel valued, there needs to be continuous support and professional development for all staff on the complete RtI puzzle. Right now I feel like we have all of these awesome puzzle pieces working to create this mater piece puzzle, but we're missing the cover picture that shows us exactly where each one goes. Change is hard, but change without clearly defined roles or the "big picture" seems impossible.
I will end with a comment I heard today that I found encouraging, one staff member said, "next year we're just have to remember that we are all in this together". That's the attitude that will make this process successful!
I accidentally posted my response to Doug as anonymous.
ReplyDeleteMary and Johnny spoke so elegantly in their postings about community and school culture. I share in there statements and find it just amazing how much the community and home culture impacts our students and shapes our buildings. At the district level it seems like a great deal of time is spent trying to determine what tools, resources, and needs our families in our community have. It's so important that educators recognize and respect the various cultures and socioeconomic differences amongst our learning community. However, when dealing with difficult students I find that I have to constantly remind myself of this and that there is so much more to these children than what is seen in just a few hours at school. It's heartbreaking to see the desperate conditions in which some of our students they live in and equally frustrating when families refuse to take advantage of the many services our community offers to support them.
ReplyDeleteFor some of our students it's like night and day what happens at school compared to life in the community or in their homes. To sum it up, I'll share a short story...I was recently having a discussion with the librarian at my school who also reads the student's names at Graduation. She was saying that in the 10 years she had been doing this, she always has a hand full of students each year that will correct her on the way she pronounces their names at Graduation. At first she felt horrible that the students would allow her and the rest of their teachers & classmates to call them by an incorrect name for two years. Then she realized that this was just their way of fitting into the school culture and community. It's amazing how students (most of which you would never have expected this from) can balance what happens in school verses their lives at home and in the community. In the end, the librarian and I reflected on how mature it was that these kids grew to know it was a sign of respect to their parents and culture to make this correction on Graduation night. We assumed that it was a good thing that they did what it took to survive and thrive in junior high even if it meant being called by a name their parents wouldn't even recognize them by.
Through out my five years of teaching I have come to realize how important a strong sense of community is for the success of a school. Fortunatly for me I have had an opportunity to be a part of two very different school communities simotaneously for the past two years.
ReplyDeleteAs you all know I have taught at Clemente High School for the past five years. For the past two years I have coached baseball at Niles North High School. I have referred to Clemente in the past as a very inner city public school. The majority of the students are of minority decent and come from poor families. Many of the parents of my students went to Clemente themselves and had children, at what I would consider, a very young age. At Clemente gangs are a part of everyday life. Most students are effected by gangs weather they are a part of them or trying to avoid them. It is not uncommon for the parents of our students to be affiliated with street gangs. These are just a few community factors that affect Clemente.
All this being said Clemente High School has a very strong sense of community. The local school council, which is the same as a school board, is very active and vocal. They are very passionate about making their school better. However, their opinions about what is best for the school, in my opinion, are not usually correct. The community is very proud of their culture. They will always do what they think is best to preserve their culture. At times I believe this blinds them to what is truly best for the school and the students. I’m not sure if this makes any sense. It’s a very complicated situation. What I’m trying to say is that even though the community wants what’s best for the school they sometimes get in the way of themselves.
One of the major problems we have at Maine East is a lack of community sense. We are one of the few high schools that really can't identify itself with a single community. Maine West is the only high school serving Des Plaines (East serves the unincorporated areas) and South serves a vast majority of Park Ridge. Maine East serves sections of Niles, Morton Grove, Glenview, Park Ridge and Des Plaines. We have to try and create an unnatural community. We have not done a very good job of that. Many times people use the excuse that our school is so culturally and ethnically diverse that there is no way to unite into a community. This lack of community is best evidenced by a very poor showing by parents at the annual Meet The Teachers Night and at Parent-Teacher Conferences. However. Maine West is also diverse but they have a much better showing at these events because of the common town. Even the lack of single common newspaper hurts our sense of community. The Niles papers and Morton grove papers tend to concentrate on the Niles Township schools. Park Ridge papers concentrate on Maine SOuth and Des Plaines papers focus on Maine West. The small part of Glenview is ignored over the Glenbrook schools in Glenview.
ReplyDeleteEven though we know this is a problem, we can't just let it get worse, because it will. Borders are not going to change. We need to make a concerted effort in any way possible to create this artificial community of Maine east stakeholders. It is possible as successful events like our annual International Celebration demonstrate. My dept chair and I discussed this problem today after our technology meeting. We thought it would be a great idea to have teachers call and individually invite parents to these events. The problem is that there needs to be buy in by a critical mass of teachers in order to make something like that successful. I don't think we have the culture for that... yet!
I have experienced the same as Ann and Johnny since I have been teaching special ed. I am consistently amazed that in as diverse a school as Maine East, our sped population is not diverse. My classes have been unproportionally male and either African-American or Hispanic. The same demographic holds true for our non-sped low level classes. The biggest difference between those populations is behavior. I have relatively few behavior issues in my classes compared to the low level students. It is clear that many of my sped students are very low reading-math-processing abilities that may have been corrected if interventions could have been provided early on. Many of these students are new to the area with poor parent involvement (what a surprise). When I taught in the private school I had a few students with much more severe disabilities (LD and autism) who succeeded in a regular classroom with no official accomodations because they decided that they were going to work hard. Most importantly was the huge amount of parent support for their student, the teachers and for the administration.
ReplyDeleteLori -
ReplyDeleteYour comment on name reading is interesting. When I was attending functions at Gemini and Maine East as a parent, I always thought about how hard it would be to read those names. Now I have to do it and I am continually butchering names.
At this years Gemini graduation, it seemed that the only major screw up was substituting a Foley for a Farley. It alsways seems like the common names are the ones that actually get messed up!
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteNick, I have had some positive and negative reviews of the new Impact policy personally. I don't miss having to tabulate the attendence with a calculator at the end of the month! I have never been good at balancing a checkbook either for that matter. It is nice to have all the students' personal information in one place as well. However, the computerized report cards have had a glitch the three out of four quarters we used them this year. For whatever reason, they did not print correctly, and an awful lot of paper and toner was wasted to reprint 800+ report cards one quarter. I also don't care for the comments that we have to choose for the students - many of them just don't fit the subject or behavior of the students we have. I much prefer writing a personal note on the card itself for each of my students. The data component of Impact is really nice though. When RtI makes its way to Chicago, we will be at an advantage. In elementary schools, we give the "Learning First" test twice per year and all of the students' scores are on there along with the ISAT data. It's broken down by questions and standards so it's easy to see what skills they have mastered and what they need to work on. When we have to form groups for tier 2 interventions in RtI, all the data we need is right there!
ReplyDeleteDuring my internship this summer I am learning a lot about the importance of administrators having a clear understanding of their commumity. Over the last 7 years I have worked in CPS, but not at a community school because our students come from all over the city. My internship is at a neighborhood grammar school and I have really scensed the importance of the administrators invovling the community.
ReplyDeleteThe more the principals know about the families, the better they can educate the children. For example, our principal was dealing with a discipline issue between a boy and a girl, and before the meeting with the parents even began, she knew the families situations, the fact that two of the students were in a previous relationship, and had a good scense of how parents would respond to their children who had acted inappropriately. Having this level of understanding, allowed the principal to handle the situation justly, so that each party invovled felt that they were treated with respect and the right decision was made.
Also, getting the community invovled can help raise support for the school. There is a local business in the community who supports the school financially every year, which allows for an art teacher to be hired to teach an after school program. If the administrators did not reach out to the community, these types of programs would not be available.
Finally, when the administrators get the community involved, the school has a good reputation inside and outside the walls of the building. People get a good feeling about the school and can trust that their school leaders are doing their best to provide the best education possible. A week before I started my internship, I was at a local park with my daughter when I met a mother of a child at the school who spoke very highly of the administrators and the quality of the education. The positive school culture is infectious!
If having a good understanding of all aspects of the community (the syllabus listed more than I can ever imagine) is vital to know how to best educate our children, then I can't imagine how challenging this would be for Doug, Ann, and Johhny's school. There are students comming from many different communities with a variety of needs. Being able to include such a large diverse community and get to know the background of the various students must get overwhelming at times. As Johnny responded to Mary, kids come first and it is important to get to know their strengths so that you can begin to tap into how to best serve them.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteIn response to Brent's posting regarding community at the elementary level, I find myself reflecting more as a new parent to the educational system then a upcoming educational leader. As most of you know my daughter started kindergarten this past fall and my wife and I were set to send her to our local public school, which has recieved good reports. However our experience when we went to visit, though not terrible, wasn't what we had hoped for. In a personal bias we also visited a independent school that I graduated from (years ago) whose vision is to be not only student based, but also parent based, in the hopes to create a solid educational community. Our experience this year is just that. Even though families come from many different communitees the school works very hard to draw them into the school community on many levels. I not only know the parents of most of my daughters classmates, I know parents across different grade levels. This allows for a greater commitment from all involved for not only the success of our own child, but the entire school community. I realized this environment takes a lot of work and a lot of commitment, but this was the vision that the school was founded on over twenty-five years ago and continues provide such a well-rounded educational experience for its students. Brent it sounds like the school you are at has a similar vision and I am happy to hear that such a climate can be maintain at the lager public school venue, unfortunately this is what was missing from our own public neighborhood school.
ReplyDeleteJust made aware that my community blog and response did not get posted as I had thought...so here they are! (also had to do two posts because not all of it fit)
ReplyDeleteCourtney said...
As an administrator, you need to have a clear sense of community, community culture, and community needs. I think it is very crucial that an administrator understands the community that they are supporting. With a lack of knowledge on a community’s culture and needs, an administrator could make decisions that will negatively impact their schools. While some decisions made by an administrator are ones that are not impacted by their community, there are many others that are. For example, if a school community seeks to have their students reach a high level of potential, so that all students will eventually go to college, then the curriculum and school standards must reflect that. If students are demonstrating skills above those of some their peers, than parents will be looking for there to be a budget for a gifted teacher and curriculum. The same goes for students with special education needs.
I have had the opportunity to work in two different school communities. My first district was the 6th largest district in Illinois. The school community was very diverse, both in respect to culture and socioeconomic status. The average class size was between 22-27 and there were 5 self-contained classrooms for our students with special needs. I saw families have similar and yet also very different opinions about their child’s educational needs. There were families that were very involved and those that I could hardly contact. What I did see in my school was our staff coming together to meet the needs of all kids, whatever their background was. Our staff knew all the kids personally, along with their families. I believe this occurred because my principal required it. She demonstrated this skill and in turn asked us to do the same. You could see how well our school community flourished and how happy our school community was. While there may not have been a lot of money in our school budget, our school was well organized, collaboration was abundant, and our teachers took the time to know our school community on a very personal level.
(to be continued...)
Courtney said...
ReplyDelete(continued)In my current school district, many of our students have a lot in common with each other. In the school that I teach in, our school demographics is very different than my previous school. While my last school had greater diversity in relation to race and ethnicity, my current school is very homogeneous. There is a 1/1 ratio of male to female and 91% of the students are white. The other 9% of students are Latino, asian, and multi-racial. A majority of the students come from Christian, well-affluent families. Less than one percent of our students are limited English proficient and come from low income households. The class sizes are between 12-18 students and there is inclusion of students with special education needs. While the parents of these students can still have differences in opinions about their child’s education, many of my parents have very similar values and opinions. Many of our parents are highly involved in their child’s education and you often see these parents coming in and out of our building all day long. They are there to drop off books, instruments, lunches, volunteering for school events, participating in school functions and fundraisers, and are there to talk with teachers on a weekly basis about their child’s needs and success. Our parents talk amongst each other within our district and as a whole, are very involved in making sure our district is providing the best possible education. This does not mean that they just participate or attend school board meetings; they also participate in our school improvement planning and influence our administrators through consistent support with our PTO. I find it very easy to get a hold of my students’ parents and some of them will call or send me emails at least 3-5 times a day. All in all I believe that these parents demonstrate a strong sense of community and exhibit this every day, including the summer. There is a strong commitment to making their schools the best for their children and the best in the state. The parents are very active and vocal about what they want and what they believe is best for our district, but they also have a strong sense of trust in our administrators. Together there is a positive sense of community, with both our stakeholders and staff, which is well reflected in the success of our students.
Courtney said...
ReplyDeleteIn response to reading everyone’s blog posts, I have some very similar opinions and things that opened my eyes. I share in the same opinion of Lori N. about how important it is to recognize, understand, and respect the cultural and socioeconomic differences within our schools. Although I would add that it is equally important to recognize that while many students can have similar cultures and socioeconomic backgrounds, what goes on at home may not be the same. I have had the opportunity to work in both a very diverse and very homogenous community. There have been cultural experiences that I have had the pleasure to participate in which gave me the understanding of these cultures; however it did not give me all the answers to what goes on at home. I find it very important to listen to both the family and the student and to make sure you have a good, solid relationship with both. The more comfortable a family or student feels, the safer they feel in trusting you. Trust is earned and can be easily lost. I have witnessed how important trust is to helping a student succeed. Brent B. also tapped into this when he discussed how important it is for principals to know about the families and the students. While many principals know a name to a face and sometimes know some families more intimately due to matters of special education or disciplinary reasons, it is also important for principals to know about the families of the students that do not stand out. This can help to bring the school community closer, which in turn could bring parents together to improve their school.
On the other hand, I have not yet had the opportunity to share the same experiences as Jeff F. I have heard about and watched documentaries on school communities that deal with gangs, violence, and crime, but I have not yet experienced it hands on. While I commend those who do, I am not sure that I would like to experience this and am grateful for those who are. I can agree with Jeff about school boards that are very active and vocal, while many of the parents are not always doing the same. While they might not always be looking in the best or correct direction, they are at least the voice of students that might not get heard or often are afraid to speak up.
After reading Tom F.’s blog, my main thought was “complicated”. What you face is very complicated and can be at times disheartening. Just thinking about the fact that you have so many communities representing your school culture is overwhelming to me. While it appears to be difficult for you to figure ways in which to make so many communities come together as one, I think that your school culture, that of your teachers needs to be addressed first.