The CARE plan review

Going through the activities this year and working collaboratively on a campus improvement initiative has allowed me to gain knowledge and confidence in leading such activities.  In order for the two middle school campuses to improve academically, I believe that providing teachers with ample time to collaborate will pay off with some big rewards in the end.

In this time of budget crunches and higher expectations, providing this extra time will have a great impact on student achievement if implemented and monitored correctly. For this reason, I recommend the development of a master schedule where teachers are provided with a conference period as designated by law and a team period where they meet with teachers from different fields of study.  First of all, providing this time will allow administrators the flexibility to meet with either departments or cross-curricular teams depending on what goal you are trying to reach.  Secondly, this additional time will allow teachers to truly disaggregate data related to academics and behavior and fully develop RTI plans which will help students.  This will be much better than the drive-by sessions that are becoming more common due to limited time.  Next, I believe that the communication with parents will become so much better because instead of the responsibility falling on one teacher, there will now be a team of teachers that will share the responsibility.  Finally, with the big push for project based learning and PLC’s, this additional time will allow for that type of planning and in the end, the big winners will be the students.

The lessons I learned from this initiative is simple.  If you want teachers to perform at their highest level and implement quality lessons for your students, you need to provide them with the best resource that you can.  While being able to pay teachers more would be great, it is not a reality.  Therefore, if it is possible to provide them the time, you will see that lessons will be better, teacher morale will be better, and overall you will have helped create a positive campus culture where everyone looks forward to coming to work.