School Reform

Today we had a discussion on our experiences with school reform. We honored our negative feelings and frustrations and we also found a what was positive about these schoolwide movements. Some of the frustrations were:

• the amount of time and energy it takes to discuss and make changes
• the emotional conflicts that occur as teachers feel their autonomy may be lost
• the miscommunication that occurs between district, administrators, and departments relating to the reform and what is expected
• having people feel like they can "opt" out of change

Positive discussions and results of school reform were also discussed:

• brings new/fresh teaching ideas
• creates focus for best practices
• makes our teaching focus on student needs
• creates relationships outside our own departments

None of these ideas were new, but it was good to feel that people had a place to voice a little dissent, while still realizing our impact on this change. We asked: in what way can we positively affect change and this was the response:

• it is up to us, the teachers, to make this work
• we all need to make a committment to change
• we recognize that we need to keep each other accountable
• we also recognized that we need expectations from the administrations, in terms of participation, long-term goals, etc.

We left the group thinking about our school vision and our CIT vision that we will create. Each person wrote down 3 words that they feel are key to creating a vision. We will discuss these ideas on Sept. 4th.