1/24/13
In attendance: Shane
Ogden, Jim Peacock, Jill Lowe, Joyce Smart, Gordon Geddes, Paul Wagoner, Curtis
Jenson, Drew Nielson, Jayne Hamblin, Lisa Hopkins, Donna Starley
Excused: Mary Morgan
Shane: There have
been a few changes since we met last. The
school board feels like we need to have a community involved meeting to discuss
the possible schedule changes. This will
happen on February 6th at 6pm here at LHS. We need to reconvene our Action Team to
discuss how the team would like to present this to the public. The board also has another schedule that
would leave start time later, that we can use as well with 55 minute class
times.
The school board will meet and vote on this on February 11th. I feel that our school board will back us and
support us, but there is always a chance that they may not. I don’t want out work here to be in vain, we
just might not be getting this implemented next year. We will have 20 minutes to present which will
be hard, because to discuss our process could take that long. This will be a regular board meeting that is
being advertised through the newspaper, I have also put it on Twitter and
Facebook. I also will get the
Robo-caller out to parents.
Jayne: What is the
worry about earlier? Is it just kid’s
need the sleep?
Shane: Many parents
having a hard time getting kids to school as it is, but it will be even harder
with 10 minutes earlier to start.
Lisa: I am wondering
why our board wants a month later to look at this issue and do a meeting. Why didn’t they ask for this in
December? Now we are another month
behind.
Jim: We just need to
be prepared to answer questions on our process and schedule. I would really like us to do a good job and
articulate what’s been done up until now.
Not many of us want to have to continue if we feel that we aren’t being
supported. I know how you all feel. We should just do a good job describing the
process, so we just need to make sure all questions are answered.
Lisa: It sounds to me
like there are just some parents that would like to know what process we have
gone through in coming to our conclusion.
Our school board seemed very supportive of an intervention time. Many people don’t understand the components
that went into it.
Shane: Will we have
people attend? The more people we can
educate about our schedule the better.
We have always been very transparent.
Jayne: I am hearing
from my students that are coming from their teachers, that they either are
actively opposing the schedule or sending out wrong information.
Jim: So we will meet
next Thursday instead of this team.
Lisa: Parents just
listen to what kids and neighbors are saying, they don’t read the blog or Facebook. A lot of parents want to hear from us.
Shane: I think we
will get out intervention, I believe we can make this intervention work, it
might not look exactly like we need it to, but it could happen.
Discussion on reading:
Shane goes over questions that were asked:
Drew: I like this first one about the Adlai Stevenson
model. The expectation that all students
were going to succeed and then walked through how that was going to happen,
that we need to be effective teachers, and then there were supports in place
that would help us achieve that. There
definitely has to be a mindset. I wasn’t
sure I liked the first paper I read, because it was unrealistic, I can’t be
everything to everyone. I like the
mindset of finding ways to help our kids that are in front of us, not trying to
figure out ways to get kids out of our classroom.
Shane: I like the
simplifying article on RTI. It starts
with the PLC’s. I have read the whole
book and I liked that one the best. I
like the functioning PLC idea.
Paul: What should a
teacher be doing as opposed to what the article is saying?
Drew: I didn’t like the RTI article because it talked about
learning as a set of skills. If you came
to my class, it’s not just a set of skills.
I want to be able to teach in a robust way that isn’t always easily
measured. If you can solve a problem in
Physics, does that mean you can do and understand Physics? I want to have more time to help students
understand. How do I get differentiated
instruction done for my 45 students? In the
Adlai paper, it talked about success coming from students as well, not just the
teachers. When I was at Adlai, the
teachers had high expectations that their students met. If we reduce everything to numbers on paper
of what their grade is, then I think our kids lose out and we can miss a lot
of. I am not really sure if our students
have a deep understanding of what I’m teaching.
Paul: If we do the
same thing with each class, when you have 5 10th grade classes that
need a quick method of assessment. Is it
my flaw for giving an assignment that isn’t helping my students?
Shane: Do we have
uniformity in our English department? In
math? We have to have viable
curriculum.
Curtis: It’s hard to
feel like we aren’t measuring what we need to measure. We can get some, but it’s not enough. The burden of the teacher needs to be spread
to the intervention team (attendance, etc.).
Paul: Public
Education is on display right now, and the whole nation things we are
failing. I here that it’s a teacher’s
job to convey knowledge and develop a detailed safety net for each student. We have to be masters of our craft, we are
professionals and we should be able to master what we do.
Drew: We can’t
collaborate once a month, it’s redundant.
You guys (administrators) should be able to do that work. Like attendance. Adlai’s departments meet once a week and work
on curriculum. We just don’t get the chance
to meet like we should.
Shane: So is it more
than just the time?
Joyce: We are
unproductive. It’s too far and few.
Drew: We never have
been trained to work like that.
Shane: I have a
success story for you from my last school.
We sacrificed all Professional Development for one whole year that we wanted
to be trained for one year and no one went to any conferences, or any training. The next year we allocated half of our money
to send the teachers that missed some of the training to a weeklong training
and finally we had enough of us that knew what we were supposed to be doing and
it started to work. For one whole year
that was all we talked about.
Curtis: My group is
focusing on professional development.
The feeling I get from my team is that we would all love to go to
something like this. Our teachers want
this.
Shane: We went to
split time between RST’s, and departmental meetings because no one could get
anything done in their RST’s.
Curtis: A common prep
would also be nice to have times to meet as a departmental.
Lisa: It’s also
frustrating when students have a different teacher the next semester and a
concept hasn’t been taught by the last teacher.
Curtis: That’s why
training is so important. We need to
know how to have these things happen.
Shane: Is this an
important enough item that we need to have this in place before we can have the
intervention work?
Paul: I don’t think
any of us know. We shouldn’t be afraid
to fail and fall down. I am happy to
support whatever we decide.
Gordon: We need to
pick one thing and do it well. We can’t
do everything.
Drew: If we have the
intervention time, it gives me some context to want to work with my
colleagues. We can all work together on
helping kids.
Paul: I need to see
instant progress. Like with my new year’s
resolution. I see an intervention time
not being really effective if we don’t know what we should be doing.
Drew: If I had an
intervention hour, it would be helpful to me to have assessments to have an
idea what students need more help, I don’t see PLC’s being much help to
that.
Paul: If we want to
be a Blue Ribbon School and we know what year 1 looks like and year 2 and so
on. We have to be honest with our scope
and sequence, with our students and faculty.
Lisa: I have seen a
real shift in student expectations and school pride in my younger kids from
what it was with my older kids. There is
a real shift. Its parents, teachers, and
students. The expectations are
definitely lower.
Curtis: I feel that it’s important to be honest up
front. Letting teachers and students
know that they are going to be frustrated with it the first year and its ok to wait
until next year for more good things to happen.
Paul: I feel that
many of our teachers here at LHS are just waiting for it to fail. I like the way Curtis termed it with feeling
frustrated.
Curtis: I think we
need to have more problem solving skills, instead of just identifying the
problem at hand. That doesn’t help. I see the intervention time as cultivating
the need for PLC’s.
Shane: I feel like
the piece of being honest is a great product from this team. Just being honest about what roadblock and
frustrations we can see as happening.
Jim: As people better
understand RTI, a teacher can be part of a collective responsibility for
kids. The most important factor in
education is a guaranteed, viable curriculum.
Kids learn at different rates. We
need to be prepared for those learners that learn slower or faster so that they
can get the same curriculum. If we could
look at our numbers and population and see that it isn’t the same as it was 5
or 10 years ago then change our curriculum to meet those needs.
Shane: This is a
responsive school team. We are a team
and are responding to needs of students, parents, teachers and the school as a
whole. We are addressing the five areas
that need to be addressed twice a week already.
I will address that. But, what do
you do in department meetings then? Its’
back to that earlier question.
Drew: why not ask our
teachers to make common assessments ahead of time? We have too many professional developments
that should have happened before school time.
Joyce: We need to
have more frequent checkups and see where we are.
Lisa: As we moved to
semesters, we thought it would be easier scheduling when kids have different
math or English teachers that aren’t really aligned.
Paul: Broke into
song….the music man.
Shane: we have talked
about all aspects of the responsive school teams. We are hitting all of the elements of
it.
Jill: We have
discussed the transition piece as well.
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