Informational Meeting

Yesterday (2/23/2005) was our first informational meeting. We offered pizza and drinks, and we ended up with a fairly solid turnout. There were close to fifteen people there, representing all four core subjects, and included teachers from some electives as well. Karen, Alan, and I were all pleased to have some many interested parties. We essentially laid out the overview of the plan, and provided some more detail on how this came about than we were able to do on Feb. 2 at the full faculty meeting. We explained some of the ideas we have regarding transformation and culture, and focused on elements of collaboration and inter-disciplinary teaching. We quickly moved to a question/discussion mode, and several topics presented themselves:

--Could we involve a career planning element to help foster a sense of purpose for students? Later, we bounced around the notion of career academies that some schools offer.

--Could we have an in-house "PTO" for parents of students?

--Should the group of students be located in one place in the building or spread out? Pros and cons abounded...PRIDE presents a model that is both valid and dissimilar. Pros--students stay in tighter, more "controlled" setting. Teacher collaboration is easier. Cons--Students isolated from rest of building. Can create a a negative "cluster culture" in that part of the building.

--What components might this program have to address the non-academic needs of our freshmen?

--How might we teach "essential student skills?" How can they be "conditioned to be learners?"

--SCHEDULE!!! This is the biggest initial challenge, and will remain so throughout the project. How can we arrange this so that students have the greatet amount of flexibility while maintaining a small learning community structure? Trade-offs will be key. We need to examine critically other schools' models, and we need to come to agreement on how we prioritize different possibilities (e.g. electives, variable math and science courses). We might develop a rating scale early on for this matter, so that we can justify any later decisions....

--Is this a tracked program? Does the lack of honors coursework create this? Could we include honors students? How do we keep kids in here who might want to take one or two honors classes?

Reflections:

--Once we have team members signed on (by next Tuesday?), does this constitute a committee? If so, we should probably get MCEA approval. Informal conversations with union leaders have indicated no concerns. Furthermore, should we establish a latent leadership structure? Karen, Alan, and I essentially comprise this already--do we need to formalize it? How do we ensure that we are as democratic as possible?
What sort of decision-making process do we need? DO we need one?

--This generalized nature of today's meeting was good and necessary--everyone had to bring his/her platform to the table. In future sessions, though, we likely will need to identify one or two facets of the intervention to address or we will get frayed and pulled in too many directions. There is no way to avoid the big picture, but micro-exploration is necessary at times....

Pike Visit--Anecdotal

On Friday, October 15th, Karen and I went to visit the Pike HS Freshman Center. It was newly opened this year, mostly as a result of overcrowding at the existing high school. The FC is connected to the high school itself, but maintains its own administrative structure, its own faculty and support staff, and its own policies and procedures. There is a high degree of collaboration with the high school, however. Some general observations:

--The building is clean and quiet. The administrators and teachers we met spent a great deal of time discussing their goal to foster a different environment from the high school. At one point, we wer taken through the door to the high school, and the climate was unmistakeably different; it was louder, with more bustle, with students in the halls during class time. There seemed to be more chaos.

--The administrators and teachers emphasized their commitment to developing a "student-centered" environment. The phrase was used at least 15 during our visit, even as a pun on the name "Freshman Center." The administrators discussed how the team who developed the center considered this as a central element. Moreover, the principal indicated that the faculty was hired and/or recruited thorugh this filter. They were each asked, "Are you willing to put students first?"

--The students observed seemed almost uniformly engaged and respectful. One student politely asked the assistant principal, "Sir? Can I let this student in?" as another student was coming in through the locked front doors. Most students greeted the teachers/administrators when they passed. In every classroom we viewed (Resource, Science, Math, English), students were on-task and engaged (working silently, raising hands, contributing to group work, etc.)