Minutes for Action Team Meeting: April 14, 2010
Attendance was taken and a pep talk was given. Leader told the committee that they were on the right track and that we are very close to the end. We need to remain focused and determined. With copies of sample action plans and the criteria for a good end result statement, the committee’s misconceptions about what needed to be done at this stage were clarified. Each member was given 5 sticky notes on which they wrote their 5 activities. Committee sorted the activities into 5 categories one of which (our global curriculum statement) has a 3 year plan. Label statements were made for each catergory and the committee dismissed after a closing statement that we will meet to add activities to support and achieve these result statements.
Categories and actions created:
1. Global Curriculum:
Year one: Research and gather global/21st century curriculum data and examples of success
Year two: Write and develop a global curriculum
Year three: Train staff on new curriculum and implement
Activities:
- A team of teachers, curriculum specialists, fine arts and technology specialists will gather together to write a global curriculum
- Funding will be provided to help committee research global curriculum data
- Technology and software will be available to special ed. and bilingual
- K-2 will be multi-age classrooms
- Inquiry-based lessons will be the norm
- Technology will be integrated throughout the curriculum
- Slaughter classrooms will technologically connect with another classroom outside of Texas.
- Professional development will be provided to all staff for the new global curriculum
2. Professional Development
- Staff will receive on-going training on current available technology as well as training on new technology as it becomes available to the campus.
Activities:
- Staff will receive several PD opportunities involving 21st century learning and receive follow-up support.
- All staff will receive PD training to learn to make teacher created Smart Board lessons that address the TEKS
- All staff will receive PD training to learn to teach student created Smart Board lessons.
- Teachers will receive training on all software and technology that is available on campus currently.
- Staff will be provided a spreadsheet of all software and technology available to them currently.
3. All teachers will be more educated in the diversity of students (backgrounds, cultures, homelife etc) and community diversity.
Activities:
- Teachers will be trained to understand and teach our diverse population through Ruby Payne’s philosophy.
4. Offer an after school extracurricular activity/club/team to encourage family involvement and support community building among our student body.
Activities:
- Offer an after school golf program
- Offer after school ballroom dance classes
- Offer after school music enrichment programs
- Offer after school sports programs
- Offer after school clubs such as chess, Spanish (foreign language), art, creative writing clubs.
5. Our campus will increase student laptop availability to 1 laptop for every 5 students.
- Campus leadership will approve the funding needed to increase the amount of laptops on campus
- Each grade level will have a portable laptop station/cart
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Action Plan Requirements
It is now time to distill the overwhelming amount of data and possible approaches to the strategy into an achievable number of specific results. We are narrowing our focus to those results which must be realized for our strategy to become reality. This is NOT a time to include every good idea that was ever mentioned, or to include all the "wouldn't it be nice" things everyone has always wanted. This is where we boil things down to their essence--what MUST OCCUR to implement our strategy? Nothing redundant is added and no component essential to implementation is omitted.
**We, as a group, MUST come to agreement on the ENTIRE set of specific results before developing the steps to achieve them.**
It is time for us to SEIZE THE MOMENT!! We now know more about our strategy than anyone else before us, so let's take this as an opportunity to effect positive change :-)
Here are the first steps we need to take:
1. identify the activities that are most important to achieve the mission and strategic objectives of the organization.
2. Group our ideas according to common themes.
3. Once sorting is complete, we need to assign each category a name and go back through the ideas to ensure that the ideas are appropriately placed.
Translating our ideas into specific results:
A properly constructed action plan includes three-components:
1. a specific result
2. implementation steps
3. cost/benefit analysis
**We must agree on all of the results before moving on to the next two steps**
A specific result is a crisp, end result of a series of actions taken to operationalize the strategy. Each specific result should fit the following criteria:
1. describes an achievement which is measureable, observable, and demonstrable.
2. It is accomplishable in 3 years or less
3. It is assignable to one person for implementation, provided that person has resources (human and financial) to accomplish the result.
4. It makes a significant contribution to the strategy
It is NOT a "plan to plan."
5. The statement should "stand by itself" to an ordinary person and not be dependent on the action steps to be understood.
6. The contribution to the mission is worth the time, effort and resources necessary to implement the result (that is, benefits outweigh the costs)
7. The statement begins with an action VERB (no double verbs)
To review:
Specific results describe what actually will be accomplished and what the administration will be held accountable for in the implementation phase.
Specific results are often the only part of the action plan which is printed and distributed to the general public.
We must agree on all specific results before you move on to writing the other two parts of the action plans.
Do an "intuitive" cost-benefit analysis to save yourself work later when formal cost-benefit analysis is completed.
When we meet next, we will be able to discuss specific action plan writing steps and get started on the final process. Blogging about the results will eliminate a meeting for us. :-)
If you have any questions, email me or blog me.
Thanks everyone!!!
**We, as a group, MUST come to agreement on the ENTIRE set of specific results before developing the steps to achieve them.**
It is time for us to SEIZE THE MOMENT!! We now know more about our strategy than anyone else before us, so let's take this as an opportunity to effect positive change :-)
Here are the first steps we need to take:
1. identify the activities that are most important to achieve the mission and strategic objectives of the organization.
2. Group our ideas according to common themes.
3. Once sorting is complete, we need to assign each category a name and go back through the ideas to ensure that the ideas are appropriately placed.
Translating our ideas into specific results:
A properly constructed action plan includes three-components:
1. a specific result
2. implementation steps
3. cost/benefit analysis
**We must agree on all of the results before moving on to the next two steps**
A specific result is a crisp, end result of a series of actions taken to operationalize the strategy. Each specific result should fit the following criteria:
1. describes an achievement which is measureable, observable, and demonstrable.
2. It is accomplishable in 3 years or less
3. It is assignable to one person for implementation, provided that person has resources (human and financial) to accomplish the result.
4. It makes a significant contribution to the strategy
It is NOT a "plan to plan."
5. The statement should "stand by itself" to an ordinary person and not be dependent on the action steps to be understood.
6. The contribution to the mission is worth the time, effort and resources necessary to implement the result (that is, benefits outweigh the costs)
7. The statement begins with an action VERB (no double verbs)
To review:
Specific results describe what actually will be accomplished and what the administration will be held accountable for in the implementation phase.
Specific results are often the only part of the action plan which is printed and distributed to the general public.
We must agree on all specific results before you move on to writing the other two parts of the action plans.
Do an "intuitive" cost-benefit analysis to save yourself work later when formal cost-benefit analysis is completed.
When we meet next, we will be able to discuss specific action plan writing steps and get started on the final process. Blogging about the results will eliminate a meeting for us. :-)
If you have any questions, email me or blog me.
Thanks everyone!!!
Thursday, March 25, 2010
3/24/2010 Meeting Minutes
3/24/2010 Action Team Meeting MinutesPresentation of Research Information
Attendance was taken at the beginning of the meeting. Committee watched "Did You Know?" Youtube video to get inspired and motivated :-) Group 1, Professional Development, presented first.
Professional Development:Professional development needs to go beyond training and rather into more implications of learning skills, developing skills, applications in the classroom, practicality, and growth with campus future objectives. Some ideas researched are:-move away from past models of professional development (where it took place only on in-service days, weekends, or during the summer) to new models that embed professional development into daily lives of teachers.-restructure teschers' work to create the mental space necessary for ongoing professional development.-assess how current professional development resources are being used and design strategies for seccuring additional resources as needed or for reallocating them.-Develop strategies for informing and convincing the public and policymakers that professional development not only is critical but also is as much a part of teachers' work as instruction.Group 1 suggested Ruby Payne as a diversity expert whose ideas would be beneficial to oiur campus.Their research determined that although bringing a professional trainer or company in for staff development would be ideal, it may not be feasible. There are many reliable resources and texts that could be utilized as staff book studies.Further consideration: Other than book studies, how can we make professional development more meaningful and powerful for us? What do we need in way of professional development? On what should the goals of the PD at Slaughter be focused?
The technology group presented next. Though they presented action plan ideas based on the research they did, there were some great ideas suggested:Group 2: TechnologyLaptops: more per grade level per studentGrant writingSuccess Maker by PearsonCompass LearningMandatory Computer class (specials?)www.especialneeds.com/special-needs-software.html for special education programs-Pearson Longman English Language TeachingFurther consideration: These are wonderful software suggestions, however, are there things we currently use or have subscriptions of on campus that could be eliminated or used more effectively? Are any of these suggested programs significantly more effective in reaching our campus goals than another? How can we use 21st century technology and continue with the times in our classrooms? What activities and use of technology could we use to enhance the learning for our students? How can we get our students more involved in the technology available to them currently?
The Global Curriculum Group presented last.Group 3: Global CurriculumEric Jensen's book Arts with the Brain in Mind and Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind were books that were highly suggested as reads for this topic. Essentially, this group's research found that as we move into new territory with our way of thinking and teaching, the "old way" just seems to fall short. Basing a curriculum around the arts, multiage classrooms, and inquiry-based teaching is a successful and strong way to bring Slaughter to the forefront. THe Waldorf School is an excellent model to demonstrate this pedegogy. Another suggestion is to incorporate or offer an extracurricular activity program that offers our students who typically would not find themselves with the opportunity to join team sports or clubs to do so. This would involve the community and parents and thus bring a sense of unity to the campus.
Further Consideration: What would this look like? Since this is radically different from what we currently do, how can we implement these ideas over the next 3 years? Could we get some more information or contact someone from the Waldorf School for more in depth information? Are there other opportunities for this kind of thinking and teaching that were not presented but would be benefical to our campus?
Homework: Think about the research presented, do a little more if you need to get a better idea of what was presented, and think of 5 GENERAL activities that we could present as an action plan to implement our passions based on the research presented. Bring those to the next meeting so we can begin writing our plans! We are almost finished everyone! I am proud of our team. This next meeting is going to be a lengthy one and we may want to do a lot of our "writing" on this blog and come together to finalize next meeting...we will discuss this later.
Thank you all for all you are doing. Your hard work, passion, and dedication to this charge is going to truly revolutionize our campus for the best for our kids.
A job well done, EVERYONE!
Joli
Attendance was taken at the beginning of the meeting. Committee watched "Did You Know?" Youtube video to get inspired and motivated :-) Group 1, Professional Development, presented first.
Professional Development:Professional development needs to go beyond training and rather into more implications of learning skills, developing skills, applications in the classroom, practicality, and growth with campus future objectives. Some ideas researched are:-move away from past models of professional development (where it took place only on in-service days, weekends, or during the summer) to new models that embed professional development into daily lives of teachers.-restructure teschers' work to create the mental space necessary for ongoing professional development.-assess how current professional development resources are being used and design strategies for seccuring additional resources as needed or for reallocating them.-Develop strategies for informing and convincing the public and policymakers that professional development not only is critical but also is as much a part of teachers' work as instruction.Group 1 suggested Ruby Payne as a diversity expert whose ideas would be beneficial to oiur campus.Their research determined that although bringing a professional trainer or company in for staff development would be ideal, it may not be feasible. There are many reliable resources and texts that could be utilized as staff book studies.Further consideration: Other than book studies, how can we make professional development more meaningful and powerful for us? What do we need in way of professional development? On what should the goals of the PD at Slaughter be focused?
The technology group presented next. Though they presented action plan ideas based on the research they did, there were some great ideas suggested:Group 2: TechnologyLaptops: more per grade level per studentGrant writingSuccess Maker by PearsonCompass LearningMandatory Computer class (specials?)www.especialneeds.com/special-needs-software.html for special education programs-Pearson Longman English Language TeachingFurther consideration: These are wonderful software suggestions, however, are there things we currently use or have subscriptions of on campus that could be eliminated or used more effectively? Are any of these suggested programs significantly more effective in reaching our campus goals than another? How can we use 21st century technology and continue with the times in our classrooms? What activities and use of technology could we use to enhance the learning for our students? How can we get our students more involved in the technology available to them currently?
The Global Curriculum Group presented last.Group 3: Global CurriculumEric Jensen's book Arts with the Brain in Mind and Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind were books that were highly suggested as reads for this topic. Essentially, this group's research found that as we move into new territory with our way of thinking and teaching, the "old way" just seems to fall short. Basing a curriculum around the arts, multiage classrooms, and inquiry-based teaching is a successful and strong way to bring Slaughter to the forefront. THe Waldorf School is an excellent model to demonstrate this pedegogy. Another suggestion is to incorporate or offer an extracurricular activity program that offers our students who typically would not find themselves with the opportunity to join team sports or clubs to do so. This would involve the community and parents and thus bring a sense of unity to the campus.
Further Consideration: What would this look like? Since this is radically different from what we currently do, how can we implement these ideas over the next 3 years? Could we get some more information or contact someone from the Waldorf School for more in depth information? Are there other opportunities for this kind of thinking and teaching that were not presented but would be benefical to our campus?
Homework: Think about the research presented, do a little more if you need to get a better idea of what was presented, and think of 5 GENERAL activities that we could present as an action plan to implement our passions based on the research presented. Bring those to the next meeting so we can begin writing our plans! We are almost finished everyone! I am proud of our team. This next meeting is going to be a lengthy one and we may want to do a lot of our "writing" on this blog and come together to finalize next meeting...we will discuss this later.
Thank you all for all you are doing. Your hard work, passion, and dedication to this charge is going to truly revolutionize our campus for the best for our kids.
A job well done, EVERYONE!
Joli
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Action Team Discussion
Here is a wonderful suggestion from Allie. BLOGGING! This hopefully will be a convenient way for us all to stay in touch over the next few weeks as we think about our action plans. Whenever you have a bright idea, just blog about it! I think this might be an excellent way for us to keep the conversation going without formal emails or quick meetings :-) What do you think?
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