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Investing in teacher learning key to growth in District 2 By Joan Richardson There was little doubt that P.S. 198 was struggling when the state of New York placed it on review. "The principal already had made significant changes and was getting really good teachers. But they just couldn't get over that hump," said Bea Johnstone who oversees staff development for New York City's Community District 2. On top of an already extensive array of staff development offerings available to all teachers, last year District 2 placed two Distinguished Teachers into P.S. 198. Each teacher had been recognized in her home school as an exemplary teacher and was paid an additional $10,000 stipend to spend a year at P.S. 198. One Distinguished Teacher worked closely with a kindergarten and a first grade teacher; the other with a third and a fifth grade teacher. Their job was to provide "very, very personal coaching" for these teachers and to share their knowledge throughout the building. The Distinguished Teachers provided staff development during planning meetings and before and after school. They allowed other teachers to watch them work and generally served as resources in the building. By year's end, all kindergarteners and first graders were reading, none of the third graders were reading below the 50th percentile, and the school had been lifted off the state's review list. "In this district, we really believe that the teacher is the person who makes the difference in the classroom. When teachers really understand teaching and learning, they will find a way to reach every child," Johnstone said. For nearly a decade, District 2 has shown a single-minded devotion to improving learning by improving instruction and investing in teacher learning. The 21,000-student district spends about $8 million a year on staff development or about eight percent of its overall budget. If other districts want to replicate District 2's success, Johnstone said they must begin by identifying their instructional objectives and focusing their staff development in those areas. "Everything hangs on our literacy initiative. Understanding how children learn and how they learn to read ñ everything is built around that," she says. The district's learning initiatives are supported by a complex web of professional development structures, some of which are described here: Professional Development Lab While the Visiting Teacher is away from her classroom, a specially trained substitute teacher called an Adjunct Teacher takes over her classroom. The Adjunct observes and works closely with the Visiting Teacher before and after the transition. The PDL is not designed to help struggling teachers but to encourage good teachers to deepen their practice, Johnstone says. Internal and external consultants In a similar way, the district has developed an in-house cadre of consultants to work with schools. These consultants essentially work in the same manner as the external advisers. This year, the district has 45 internal consultants. Intervisitation/peer networks New principals are paired with "buddies" who are senior administrators. During their first two years as principals, they spend a day or two each month in their buddies' schools. The district budgets about 300 days of professional development time for intervisitations. The peer networks are an outgrowth of these intervisitations as teachers and principals widen their circle of colleagues. For example, principals have a monthly conference which is organized around instructional issues and takes place in a school. As part of the meeting, the principals visit classrooms, observe demonstration lessons, and use a protocol to observe and analyze classrooms. Off-site training Each school receives money to plan its staff development for the coming year. Then, these school-level plans are integrated into a districtwide plan for summer institutes. The district pays for much of this training and the bulk of its training money supports the literacy and math initiatives that have been the district focus for a number of years. But Johnstone emphasizes that spending money on summer learning would have little impact if the district didn't provide direct assistance to teachers during the school year. Oversight and principal site visits Top administrators, including the superintendent, make at least one formal visit to each school each year. Johnstone says she spends three to four mornings a week visiting schools, most often informally. During these visits, "we go into each and every classroom with the principal and talk to each and every teacher about the progress in that classroom. We look at the classroom. We listen to the teachers. We look into the faces of the children. We ask the students what they are learning. We look at the work in their workbooks and their folders," she says. As a result, this central office administrator says with some pride that she knows the name of every teacher in the district and suspects the superintendent is nearly as familiar with the teachers. This continual monitoring is a crucial part of putting this puzzle together
and emphasizing that education is a personal and an individual issue, she
says. As Johnstone and other administrators make their school visits, they model this behavior by asking each principal about the work of individual teachers. Johnstone says this is simply "walking the talk." "If I can ask them how Mary, Tom, or Joe is teaching, then they will be asking the teacher how Mary, Tom, or Joe is learning," she says.
New York City's Enrollment: 21,000 Racial/ethnic mix: Limited English Proficient: 16.7 % Free/reduced lunch: Average 55%, but range from 0 to 100 %. For more information, read Investing in Teacher Learning by Richard Elmore. Order from Kutztown Publishing Co., Inc., P.O. Box 326, Kutztown, PA 19530-0326, phone (888) 492-1241, press 1, or fax (610) 683-5616. Price: $10.
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