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| A colleague successfully uses these stools these stools. |
Some of the areas they are focussing on include the following:
- Raising the Bar
- Enhancing the Curriculum
- Promoting Health and Wellness
- Employing Technology
- Exploring Early Childhood Education
These are excellent areas of consideration, and I know that collecting multiple viewpoints will help to create a vision that's broad and deep.
From my vantage point as a classroom teacher at the elementary level, I have the following perspectives in each area.
Raising the Bar
At the elementary level, I believe this begins with thoughtful efforts with regard to differentiation and personalization. We want to look for ways to help every child achieve essential skills in well-researched, timely, engaging ways. We also want to challenge children to use their learning to build new learning, learning that impacts their world in meaningful ways. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we want to teach children how to learn by developing learning to learn mindsets, dispositions, and behaviors.
Enhancing the Curriculum
Again, from the perspective of an elementary school teacher, I believe my school administrator is on the right track as he discusses building social competency and learning through service learning. I believe that the service learning should grow with depth, greater collaboration, and meaning. The administrator's efforts in this regard have been strong and positive. As I've mentioned before, since service learning was instituted at our school, behavioral concerns dropped to almost none, and student service work has grown exponentially.
Also, I believe we have to continue our path towards a blended learning environment, an environment that uses the best tools, materials, and pedagogy to develop student engagement, empowerment, and education. We have to look to the future with our curriculum as well. Last year's MBAE report is a good guide for curriculum growth with respect to project base learning and collaborative effort. We also have to look to the specific research related to essential skill development in reading, writing, and math, and employ multiple strategies and efforts so that we meet each learner's needs. Cognitive research should also be at the forefront of our efforts in this regard as we review, revise, and rewrite curriculum to best match the way students truly learn, not the ways we once thought they learned.
Further, current efforts to build better collaboration and communication amongst the learning team, families, students, educators, leaders, and citizens, have been very positive. These efforts should continue and deepen. For example efforts related to professional learning communities (PLCs) have been terrific and have room for growth. The same is true for response to intervention (RTI).
Further, current efforts to build better collaboration and communication amongst the learning team, families, students, educators, leaders, and citizens, have been very positive. These efforts should continue and deepen. For example efforts related to professional learning communities (PLCs) have been terrific and have room for growth. The same is true for response to intervention (RTI).
Promoting Health and Wellness
The families in our community lead this charge through their healthy lifestyle choices. Also our movement to healthy school habits including no junk food, hand washing, lots of outdoor play, new furniture that's more comfortable and healthy (stand-up desks, active sitting stools. . .), a great playground with lots of space and state-of-the-art movement/play/learning equipment, school gardens, physical education programs based on collaboration, cooperation, and healthy lifestyles, and social competency programs starting at an early age are all working to develop greater health and wellness.
Greater attention to our school's physical environment is one step towards developing the health and wellness efforts more. For example, we may want to work with the nearby community pool to offer daily swimming lessons before school to students who need that activity burst early in the morning before the academic day. We may want to change our school lunch routines to make those routines more comfortable with new furniture, indoor/outdoor eating spaces, and an open kitchen so that students can view the cooking efforts. Making lunch less institutional and more friendly will work to build healthy eating habits.
Further, we should continue to work to build more interdisciplinary curriculum efforts, efforts that meld health and wellness into content learning. There are many ways to do this, but it takes time and focus. For example at particular grades, there could be math units that deal with health and wellness statistics. Students would learn the math and also grow their understanding of healthy foods and activities.
Employing Technology
Our school system has a strong, versatile infrastructure. We rarely have tech issues, and can almost always access the Internet when needed. Further, we have a great initial collection of hardware. I think we should move forward with technology in the following ways:
Godin points out the value of a keyboard, I concur.
Greater attention to our school's physical environment is one step towards developing the health and wellness efforts more. For example, we may want to work with the nearby community pool to offer daily swimming lessons before school to students who need that activity burst early in the morning before the academic day. We may want to change our school lunch routines to make those routines more comfortable with new furniture, indoor/outdoor eating spaces, and an open kitchen so that students can view the cooking efforts. Making lunch less institutional and more friendly will work to build healthy eating habits.
Further, we should continue to work to build more interdisciplinary curriculum efforts, efforts that meld health and wellness into content learning. There are many ways to do this, but it takes time and focus. For example at particular grades, there could be math units that deal with health and wellness statistics. Students would learn the math and also grow their understanding of healthy foods and activities.
Employing Technology
Our school system has a strong, versatile infrastructure. We rarely have tech issues, and can almost always access the Internet when needed. Further, we have a great initial collection of hardware. I think we should move forward with technology in the following ways:
- Begin BYOD to augment our school collection of tools. (Note that students' free time use of iPhones at the high school is essentially a BYOD effort in place at present.)
- Provide each child with one tech tool, the tool that best meets the grade-level's needs in dynamic ways. For example, I still believe laptops are best for grades 4 and 5 since we're doing so much writing and content creation. We'll also take new tests that require writing.
- Have a mixed platform available in every school. Make sure there's a number of class sets of multiple tools available. For example our grade level has a class set of iPads to augment our laptop collection (which is now 2 to 1 for laptops, ideally I'd like 1-1) and this is great.
- Streamline systems for tech use and exploration so that teachers are encouraged to try out new tools in responsive, dynamic, student-centered ways.
- Re-look at tech support models in order to boost curriculum efforts, differentiation, problem/project-base learning, and personalization in more dynamic, student-centered ways. Like health and wellness, this points to re-looking at the physical plant of the elementary school and thinking about how the environment can influence all learning in dynamic ways with new furniture, physical plant arrangement, and scheduling/teaching structures. This post outlines a model that I still think still holds merit for school growth. It may be that the long range plan includes remodeling or building new elementary school campuses that are up-to-date like the new high school. A new campus or physical structure remodeling could include STEAM labs to promote greater 3-d, inventive, science, tech, engineering, arts, and math learning.
- Keep abreast of the United States Department of Education Technology Department's initiatives as they are truly moving efforts forward with regard to tech in positive ways.
- Make sure that educators are attending the best tech conferences regularly. Leadership in this area can continue to encourage this by inviting educators to these events regularly and with lead time.
Exploring Early Childhood Education
It's time that all children have a full-day kindergarten program, and I believe our efforts in the early childhood education realm are very strong. This is not my area of knowledge, so I have less to say in this area, but overall, I believe these programs should be multi-modal, hands-on learning programs that meet the needs of the community with regard to early childhood care and education.
Note: At first, I wrote about the possibility of a new elementary campus for a long range plan, but since I'm a fan of neighborhood schools for multiple reasons, I'd rephrased this as remodeled or new elementary school campuses.
Note: At first, I wrote about the possibility of a new elementary campus for a long range plan, but since I'm a fan of neighborhood schools for multiple reasons, I'd rephrased this as remodeled or new elementary school campuses.
Godin points out the value of a keyboard, I concur.
