UTW Blog
Spanking?
Sen. Phil Journey, R-Wichita, plans to introduce a bill that would shield educators from legal liability for administering corporal punishment to students. "From what I've seen and what I've been told by teachers and parents, we need to bring some order to schools, particularly middle schools," Journey said. Kansas doesn't have a law forbidding corporal punishment, but many schools have banned it because of concerns they could be sued, Journey said. Under his bill, "local school boards would still have the option of allowing or not allowing corporal punishment," he said. In addition, the bill would mandate that parents would have to authorize the school to spank their child. Journey said his own experience in school makes him think that a credible threat of corporal punishment would have a moderating effect on misbehavior, even if it is seldom used. "I came close a couple times," he said. "Believe me, I straightened up." Reactions?
Pacing Guides
Pacing Guides Many teachers have commented about Pacing Guides. Some find them helpful, others say they too restrictive and take away felxibility. What is your opinion?
DCA's
DCA District Common Assesments are generating many questions and comments. We invite you to post your opinion about dealing with DCA's.
Recess Takes A Break - Again
When Superintendent Brooks answered Randy Schofield’s questions about the lack of recess in our elementary schools, he gave what appeared to be honest and common sense answers. Winston felt that every kid should have at least 15 minutes of recess a day, over and above lunch. UTW thanked him for that public stance. Then, Assistant Superintendent of Elementary Schools Greg Rasmussen sent an e-mail to principals reinforcing the Superintendent’s position. All large bureaucracies are very good about defending themselves. It doesn’t matter whether you are talking about the Federal Government, City Hall, or a 50,000 student school district. Following the Superintendent’s public recess position, the internal wheels of the district’s bureaucracy got busy. Edicts had already been in place restricting recess and other non-productive behaviors. Their rationale seems to go something like this: If test scores are to go up, it will only happen by having a multi-pronged approach. We need to improve our teaching skills through vast amounts of Professional Development, ratchet down the flexibility in the curriculum so teachers teach only what is tested in the way the district wants it taught, and jettison all off-task-unwanted behaviors like recess. As the first rumblings of random acts of recess began to be heard, the Bureaucratic Defense Mechanisms (BDM) were activated. BDMs are very effective and they worked like a charm in this case. Soon after recess had reappeared in the life of kids and teachers, the BDMs were used to reinforce the earlier edicts about unwanted and unproductive behaviors like recess. “Recess can and should be taken,” the BDMs would say. “However, you cannot interrupt the two hour reading block, nor the 30 minutes of writing immediately following it, nor can you interrupt the 90 minute Math block followed by the Math Interventions, etc....” When teachers were confronted by the BDM response they would ask, “When can I take the kids to recess?” The BDM response would make any veteran politician proud, “Anytime you want, dear. Follow the restrictions and it will be just fine.” What would happen if the Superintendent tried to make sense of the BDM response? Would the BDMs effectively negate the Superintendent’s rather public pronouncement in favor of recess? Or would the Superintendent be able to squelch the BDMs, alter the overly restrictive edicts and get the students of this district the occasional recess they so desperately need? That would be an interesting struggle. Hope it happens soon.
Moderating this blog
In moderating this blog, the only posts that have been deleted or rejected have been duplications from the same author. If I catch the duplication before it is published, only the one comment shows up in the blog. If I delete a comment after it has been posted, no explanation is allowed to be given, according to the rules of Blogger.com. The only reasons UTW has for refusing to publish a comment would be for profanity, duplication by the same author, or an extremely off-topic post.
Investigations
I have heard many comments from elementary teachers about the emphasis in math on investigations. Mostly negative. I know of one school teaching investigations that seems to be ok with it. They have been at it for several years and have seen gains in student math scores. So is teaching investigations not effective or is the problem that it is new to many teachers? I admit to not being an elementary classroom teacher and I can't bring persoanl experience to this topic. I do hear from and speak with many teachers. I do not sense a general buy-in to this approach. Why? (For more information on investigations see: http://investigations.terc.edu/curr/index.cfm)
$1,500 Bonus
An interesting development occurred last night at the BOE meeting. During discussion of the payment of the $1,500 to teachers and administrators in the schools that qualify for the bonus came the question – Were there any principals transferred from a bonus school to a non-bonus school? The answer was yes, there were a few. Q – will they still get the bonus? Yes, because they were transferred by downtown. Q - How long will they continue to get the bonus? For the rest of their careers in USD 259!!!! Wow! Another example of how poorly this plan has been thought out and implemented.
PLC time
PLC time is a topic of interest in the district. There was a training last Friday (8/18) that generated some concerns. UTW Leadership communicated with downtown and met with them on Monday to discuss PLC time. The scheduled training on Tuesday (8/22) was revamped after what happened on Friday. The result was a training that did a good job of trying to explain PLC time. They attempted to clarify a new (to Wichita middle & elementary schools) and hard to define idea for the principals and teachers present. During the course of the training, a few items that were discussed should provide some relief to many of the apprehensions and concerns that have been expressed. It was made clear that there should never be dictated agendas for PLC Teams. It should never be top-down. Shared decision making was used numerous times to describe the atmosphere PLC Teams should experience. It was also made clear that succesful PLC Teams will not be the same from building to building. There are still questions unanswered. It all seems a little fuzzy yet to many folks. True collaborative application takes a sincere effort to want to improve from all PLC Team members.
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