Thursday, June 07, 2018

Good Use of Time: Building Capacity for Learning

While many schools are short staffed and need greater staff to do the job well, it's also possible that some schools and systems are not using their staff and time efficiently and effectively.

I bet if you were to study staffing and schedules, you could find more time-on-task with students by streamlining administrative and coaching staff and tasks to make more time for people to work directly with students.

Yesterday as I edited with one student after another while managing the other 24 students in my class, I wondered if there were additional staff that could have helped out. Could it be that there are some in administrative, specialist, or coaching roles that could lend a hand when it comes to the day-to-day, student-by-student work that's needed to teach well.

At our Middle School, they created a writing lab to provide that one-to-one support with editing and writing coaching. I can imagine that's ideal as a teacher can truly concentrate when he or she works with one or a small group--it's a much more difficult task to edit with one while managing 24 others who are working independently. The noise factor, questioning, and needs alone takes away from the one-to-one edit and student attention.

So I wonder about re-looking at roles, structure, and time-on-task. Who is doing what? Can administrative and coaching tasks and roles be streamlined to make more time for the essential one-to-one and small group coaching that students benefit so greatly from? I think that might be possible.