For my experience, it was successful. We were a small staff, everyone knew each other. All the English teachers prepped together, shared, we worked with social studies to make interdisciplinary lessons, we knew the science and math teachers, we talked. It was a closeknit group. Don't get me wrong- it was not all laughter and giggles. We weren't all best friends. BUT the structure that was set up made it easy to share and collaborate.
This week, I've been thinking a lot about this model, these experiences.
My current school is over 1600 students. In fact, I think we're over 1700 students with the influx of new students from rezoning.
I've written before about our issues with chronic absenteeism, abysmal graduation rates, below 20% achievement on state reading and math tests. We say we're implementing Tier I interventions. We say we're a Jensen school addressing poverty. In my 3 1/2 years there, I haven't seen anything change.
We re-started a freshman academy this year, and many teachers are expressing frustration that we're paying lip service to stuff, but when we think outside the box, are told no.
So today I sat and mapped out what reorganizing the school would look like.
Divide our campus into three schools. We have three main classroom buildings with roughly the same amount of classrooms, so that seems an easy, natural, division.
Each "house" or academy would have roughly 550 students. We have a principal and three assistant principals. So each one would get a house/academy. We have 5 guidance counselors, a school focus would not mean a reduction in loads for them, but might enable them to work more efficiently with the teachers and principals.
We would still share facilities like the gym, fine arts, performing arts center, etc. But, the schools would have separate lunches.
Our school currently runs on this bell schedule:
We could keep this, but to accommodate the separate lunches, we'd do this:
Monday:
5th: one school goes to lunch at 1130
6th: one at 12 then class. One class, lunch at 1230, then back to class.
Tuesday-Friday
4th/5th: one school goes to lunch at 1130
6th/7th: one at 12 then class. One class, lunch at 1230, then back to class.
I know many schools that break up like this assign the schools themes, topics. They get community sponsors/buy in for support. I think at first, it would be easier to randomly split the schools by numbers, just reorganize, then see if topics/themes come about.
Some choices based on our students would be:
- A bilingual/ELL school
- Spanish
- ELL
- French
- Bilingual classes
- Science
- Math
- Social studies
- A CTE/Science and Tech
- Autos
- Woods
- Physics (AP)
- ROTC or their ROV/tech focus
- Culinary
- Computers
- Jewelry
- Photography
- Yearbook
- Another would be fine arts/humanities.
- English
- 9-11
- AP
- Film Criticism
- Shakespeare
- Creative Writing
- Psychology
- History
- Sociology
- Music (band/orchestra)
- Theatre
- Fine arts (ceramics, art, drawing)
Each house or academy could have a color, an aspect of the school colors- scarlet, blue, gold? Each could have their own name. Our mission statement is Knowledge Today...Success Tomorrow. What if the bilingual academy was Success? Science and Tech was Tomorrow? Humanities was Knowledge?
Some subjects like PE, Science, fine arts, might serve more than one school, but certainly would weigh more one way than the other. So most of the fine arts might be in the humanities school, lower science might be spread evenly, but higher ups like AP and physics, might be in the science and tech. A lot would depend on the teacher, ideally these academies would allow staff to pursue their interests.
I think especially the bilingual/ELL academy would honor our 86% Chican@ population, encourage participation in the bilingual seal program, and better support our ELL students.
Within these schools, there would be roughly 30 faculty, so it'd be easier for them to get to know each other, work together. If it was divided into these schools, then the math, English, history teachers could work to design curriculum, interdisciplinary projects, within those themes/topics, each class supporting and adding to the others.
We'd keep the same mascot, sports teams, clubs, so there'd be that shared set of experiences. Same with dances and such. But the academies could "compete" for spirit things versus grades competing.
The smaller schools, divided on campus, would also mean that we would know all the students in our school. We'd see them in the hall, know their names, be able to intervene, know our families.
Research is a little iffy on this type of division. Some schools who did it say it didn't work, but also couch that by saying that it didn't work because they broke into smaller schools but kept the same structures, so things didn't change. Like freshman or sophomore academies, just breaking down into smaller pieces doesn't fix things. They require perspective shifts and a willingness to do real work. In the schools where the reorganization DID work, graduation rates rose, sometimes as high as 30%. Chronic absenteeism dropped. Test scores rose.
I don't know. I've experienced a LOT where great ideas, easy to execute, were suggested to improve schools, but administration wasn't willing to try them, or tried but didn't support and follow through.
But I am also a worker bee. I am really incapable of sitting by and not trying to help.
Anyone have thoughts- experiences in smaller schools? Successes? Failures? I'd love to hear.
No comments:
Post a Comment