Serving on a Block Schedule committee at the Senior
High afforded me the opportunity to experience group decision
making and gain a better understanding of what it means to organize
major changes in a large system. The committee was formed in
an effort to develop a plan for implementing policies and procedures
for Block Scheduling. The scope of this project was enormous
because minute details had to be dealt with to ensure that day
to day operations would run smooth. Great attention also had
to be given to how teachers would need to adjust their teaching
styles to make the longer periods productive and interesting.
In 2001-2002 the Middle School also implemented
Block Scheduling and I recognized the Stages of Innovation-decision
Process that we dealt with in one of my courses, Leading Organizational
Change TTD 805. The linked document shows the five stages
and
how they apply to what took place in the Mitchell School District.
Mitchell Middle School is currently in the process
of developing a NCLB plan to address the sub groups that did
not meet the required levels for the NCLB tests. Our sub groups
needing immediate attention are the Economically disadvantaged
students, Native American students and Special Education students.
As the Principal of the Middle School it is my responsibility
to lead
a team
of staff members and community members in developing a plan
to address how we can better prepare our students academically.
As part of the process I am also trying to better
educate myself on effective teaching programs. In doing so
I attended a Cognitively Guided Instruction Conference. The
CGI Conference was designed specifically for administrators
and presented information on how to help
Native American
students learn more efficiently. Differentiated Instruction
is a major part of CGI and the conference gave me a hands on
experience and was
In order to view Differentiated Instruction in
use I and two teachers visited the public middle school in
Willmar Minnesota. The day was spent observing in the classroom
and interviewing the administration as well as the staff. Our
goal was to get ideas about not only Differentiated Instruction
but on the structure of their daily schedule. We prepared a
powerpoint presentation for our staff outlining our findings.
This powerpoint
will
be presented
to
the Mitchell
Middle School staff and used as a starting point for discussion
of how we might improve our classroom instruction and scheduling.
