Adan Andres Chavez
EDLD 5398
L20288605
List of School Improvement Recommendations
Over the past eighteen months I have been exposed to the ins and the outs of
what it takes to effectively run a school. I have sat in on a job interview, create
special lessons for students, helped run our Parent-Teacher-Organization (PTO),
and have spent numerous hours on my campus learning how everything comes
together. Spending this amount of time on campus has given me much perspective
on what our strengths are and what our weaknesses are as a school. By addressing
these issues, my goal is to make our school a stronger and safer place for our
students to attend and our staff to work.
Improvement 1: General School Safety
It is no doubt that all schools can be doing more to be to make their building safer.
One area of improvement is the overall safety of our school. After the recent
happenings at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, our entire district has been
reviewing its procedures on what to do incase of a crisis. As of right now the
standard procedure is to run a quick background check on visitors who want to
enter the school. While that may serve as a first layer of protection for our kids, we
need to take a look at the bigger picture: where is our school the most vulnerable?
Our school is only two years old, and when building the school, they had wanted it
to be “environmental friendly” which caused it to have high levels of glass. Needless
to say, that glass can shatter very easily which could allow for intruders to enter. My
suggestion would be to replace that glass with bulletproof glass. This may give
workers as well as parents an added sense of comfort knowing that their kids are
safe.
Improvement 2: Parental Involvement
When I started the Lamar Internship, I was starting at an elementary campus in its
first year of existence. Due to the State of Texas’ budget crisis, our district thought
that it would save money by pulling a few teachers from each elementary campus,
rather than hiring a new set of teacher to staff the school. Doing this made things
really interesting for our school because each teacher was used to doing things a
little different. Since we were a brand new campus, there was really not a “set” way
of doing things, especially in the area of getting the parents involved in our school.
To be quite honest, our first year, the standards were very low in getting parents
involved on our campus. We had an occasional school function, and a Math and
Science Night, but we all knew that we could have done much more in that area.
When the 2012-2013 school year started, we learned that there was going to be a
change in our Administration, and that the new Principal’s top priority were
improved test scores and a significant increase in parental involvement. We started
off by having a committee of teachers and staff who would head up our Parents and
Teachers Organization (PTO). The President of the PTO was our receptionist who
was full of ideas on how to get parents involved in our school. During our first
committee meeting we had talked about the idea of hosting our first annual “Bingo
Night” in which parents would accompany their children to the school and play
Bingo. Parents would be able to purchase Bingo cards as well as refreshments,
which would also be used as our fund raiser. Going into this event, we had no idea
how successful it may be. It turns out that we had an entire cafeteria full of students
and parents wanting to play Bingo! The night was quite a success to say the least. In
our next committee meeting, we decided that we host our first annual Outdoor
Movie Night. This event was even more successful than our Bingo Night! Many
parents were raving about this activity and were looking forward to our next event.
In November of 2012, the President of our PTO had transferred to another campus.
Unfortunately, we have not had another event since her transfer. While we were
proud of the two events we had hosted earlier in the year, we have noticed that
many parents have not been as involved in or on our campus. One of the solutions
that I plan to suggest to our administrators is to have two committee meetings a
month pertaining to parental involvement. We could set something up to where we
have parents come to the meetings and have their input to what they would like to
see on our campus. I would also like to see parents more involved in student’s
education on our campus. I remember growing up, we would always have parents
come read to us or even tutor us a few times each month. Having parental
involvement in our school is crucial to our student’s success. I honestly think that
most parents who are involved in our school often feel a sense of accomplishment as
well too.
Improvement 3: Community Business Partnerships
As mentioned in the previous post, our school is in its second year of existence.
Unfortunately our school is located on the outskirts of town in which no businesses
are located for miles within the radius of our campus. Because of this, it is very
difficult to partner with businesses around our community. This year, I chose to be
a part of our campus’ Representative Council Committee in which we discussed how
we could successfully partner with local businesses. Two of the major companies
we were able to network with were Smoothie King and HEB. Smoothie King has
offered a 10% discount to any teacher or staff member that works for our school.
Another perk is that every week our administrators choose a “Teacher of the Week”
in which they are given a certificate and a coupon good towards a free smoothie
from Smoothie King. HEB, on the other hand either offers us a hefty discount or
even donates food and supplies such as hot dogs and chips for when we have events
such as “Bingo Night” or “Movie Night.” We do realize the importance of networking
with these companies, but as mentioned earlier, we are located far from any
companies. One successful company that we were also able to partner with was
Peter Piper Pizza. They had donated coupons for free pizza for any students who
had made the Honor Roll or even achieved Perfect Attendance. As a leader of the
school, I know that there are companies waiting to be partnered with. Our
leadership team had talked about “blitzing” our community businesses in order to
form a relationship with them. We have seen the benefits of other campuses who
have formed successful partnerships, and we believe that one day, we can be one of
those campuses as well.
Improvement 4: Technology Integration
In the past few years our district has done a tremendous job with providing
students to become 21st century learners and teachers to become 21st century
educators. Some examples include our district purchasing iPads for our campus
administrators. After interviewing my principal, they have told me that the iPad
has changed the way they conduct teacher's PDAS review. Instead of bringing in a
clunky laptop, they simply run their evaluations straight from the iPad. In terms of
student use, this year The Board has adopted a "Bring Your Own Device" policy in
which students can bring their own laptops, smart phones, and tablets into the
schools and use the district's wireless internet to work on assignments and projects.
The only problem with this is the fact that many teachers are not comfortable in
using technology themselves, much less ready to show students how to do
something that involves technology. Each year at the beginning of the school year I
send out an email and even announce at meetings all the available technologies that
we offer. I also explain that I would be willing to train any teacher that is hesitant in
using these technologies. I usually get a mixed response; we have a handful who are
confident in using various devices, yet majority of the teachers do not choose to
check out any of the equipment, much less desire to be trained on it. After meeting
with our district's Director of Technology Services, she says to keep on offering the
trainings and to not get discouraged with teachers that are not yet using technology
in their classrooms. Normally if the curriculum is requiring various technologies,
that particular teacher will seek out the campus IT person (which is myself.)
Improvement 5: More services for "low" students.
I am sure that this improvement would be on any school's list, but at our campus (at
least from my perspective) it seems like there are not that many services that reach
out to the students that are at risk of failing. Currently, we have a Read 180
program available to our 3rd, 4th and 5th graders. Each day, they are pulled out of
class for about an hour and a half and worked with. We also have special services
for students that may have learning disabilities. However, with the demands of the
curriculum, it can be very rough for teachers to stop and re-teach things to those
students who are not "getting it." Just this past week at our Team Leader meeting,
our principal unveiled a new after school tutoring program. Teachers would have a
group of no more than 8 students to work with for about an hour and a half each
week. During this tutoring program, teachers are able to teacher the way the it
works best for the student, and does not have to be bound by the curriculum. A
perk of this program is the fact that teachers get paid to tutor these kids. (In
previous years, it was all done voluntarily.) We are all excited to see the results of
this program, but we know that we can do more. In future years, maybe we can
expand these tutoring services to two or three days a week. We have also recently
adopted various technology based software so that students can get more of an
individualized learning experience. We look forward to looking at the data once all
of the testing is complete.