Moritz's Blog

Thursday, January 25, 2007

As we continue to discuss the "big picture" ideas in our classrooms, I wonder how many people are really on board with this idea. Last week, I sat at the lunch table and listened to many people talking about the calendar proposal. I think that it is critical that we rearrange the time that we have in order to give teachers a chance to PLC the right way, and I think it is a safe assumption that the school district is determined to rearrange the time we have as opposed to spending money to give additional time for PLCs. Don't misread me, I don't want to give up inservice time--I think our inservice time is precious; however, I do think that we need to get things rolling and not take another year to think this through. It's common sense.

2 Comments:

At 4:13 PM, Blogger Karl Fisch said...

I'm not so sure it's a given that the district is completely opposed to spending money on this. After all, they were originally going to spend $330,000 for the "daycare" portion. I agree that we need time, but I've argued vociferously that we need more time, not just shifted time. We'll see if that makes any difference . . .

 
At 4:41 AM, Blogger Carolyn Foote said...

Karl--

Coming here from a completely different school district, but I would totally agree with your point.

Teachers need time if there is any innovation to be done. That is the one biggest concern we hear from our teachers at my school as well.

Keep trying. Our state added course requirements and so our school is changing to a 7 period day(and thus adding another class for each teacher), just at the time we are really trying to innovate and make changes. We had been trying to build support in our district for teachers teaching 5 of 7, but felt doubtful.

This week to our surprise and delight, the district agreed.

I'm not positive all of our teachers have bought into the bigger picture yet, but now that there is more time during the school day, we have the opportunities to collaborate, conduct workshops, have interdepartmental planning...and I think this will make a huge difference.

So, the point of that story is...don't give up. Share your vision and make it about educational benefit to the students!

 

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