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Not forgotten about the model schools...

goodnessgraciouswv — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 20:37:45 +0000

…just been busy thinking about the consolidation and locating the new (too big) school outside the city.

All three of the aims that I post about on here are about the same thing: making schools where the students are engaged and included and valued, where they can learn to value learning and learn HOW to communicate and to learn.

We need buildings and grade configurations that facilitate these things (student bodies not so large that the teachers and students cannot all know each other; where everything is clean and safe; preferably in the neighborhoods so the students can walk there and parents can easily participate); we need educational policy and curriculum that REALLY expands depth of learning and teaches children how to find what they need and how to communicate. These don’t seem like un-attainable goals.

Keeping Enslow & BH un-consolidated, or at the very least, in the city, would help.

Getting more schools involved with the Harless Center in Dr. Stan Maynard’s League of Model Schools would help.

Getting a small, public 6-12 school in the Miller building when the Southside kids move to the new building would help.

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What to do about Enslow/Beverly Hills...?

goodnessgraciouswv — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 17:53:18 +0000

• I hope that a consolidated Enslow/Beverly Hills Middle School will not be built outside the city limits of Huntington. Our students are better served by neighborhood schools. Every effort should be made to maintain schools in the neighborhoods–if this means fixing their buildings, redistricting and building new buildings, closing Enslow and making its associated elementaries into K-8 schools, something, then these should all be considered. It is ridiculous for 13-year olds from Guyandotte and Highlawn and downtown Huntington to have to be bussed all the way out to Norway Avenue in order to be warehoused in what will be the second largest middle school in the state.

I’m afraid that I leave my hopes right now on the SBA not giving the County the money for the building, but I would love for there to be another way around this. I have several suggestions for other ways to handle this, actually. I know that I am not on your staff and I’m not an architect, but here are my rough, brain-stormed ideas that I hope you will give some consideration to:

(a) getting SBA funds to bring Enslow up to code–I have been told numerous times that the SBA only gives money for *new buildings* (not renovations, I believe I’ve been told) of a certain minimum size, but I know that is not entirely true. In March 2007, Cabell County was given $50,000 to replace the windows in Altizer Elementary under the auspices of MIP (Major Improvement Plan)–I believe they are trying to raise the limit to $1 million per project. Other similar projects must also qualify, right? I am not familiar with the building, I have only been in it one time, but I had the idea that with the Miller building it would have been possible to build a “tower” between the two wings of the building that had an elevator and maybe additional handicap-accessible restrooms.

(b) redistrict for middle schools. I know that this seems to be anathema to the Board, or at least to the central office, but I bring it up again. I have looked over WVDE policy 6200 and know that the SBA wants these Economies of Scale, but research shows that those are NOT actually saving any money (while the larger school atmosphere DOES hurt achievement and damages the community/personal support of students) Read “Jack & the Giant School” from the New Rules Project. So, Enslow is “too small”, but Beverly Hills is not, even by SBA standards. Perhaps some group of students that has been going to Beverly Hills could go to Enslow, and ALL of the students from Hite Saunders (and any other schools that send SOME students to Barboursville and some to BH) could go to BH. I don’t know all of the population data and cannot imagine all of the roads in my head, but there are probably other options (including, if BH really needs to be replaced, moving that middle school to another location to make the commute easier, while shifting some of those closer to Enslow to it.

(c) close Enslow and make prek-8 schools at the elementaries it serves. I believe the central office is opposed to k-8′s but that is the model that Dr. Stan Maynard is working toward with the 21st century model schools and many other school systems have had excellent results with them, including Cincinnati ( http://www.oppaga.state.fl.us/reports/pdf/0502rpt.pdf ).

(d) revisit Rotary Park site (or another site that is between the two schools geographically). This is what I hear from lots of people “on the street”. It was suggested that if Enslow were sold (for real money) that could help purchase another site.

Any interested teachers, please read! On Model School League

goodnessgraciouswv — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 19:35:50 +0000

The VERY short version of this is that Dr. Stan Maynard is looking to have model school programs with more schools. They will get all sort of support, like what is going on at Kellogg now (see http://www.marshall.edu/coe/jhc/projects/modelschool/ ). They will use some things developed specially for local schools, along with State Superintendent Steve Paine’s 21st Century skills stuff, Effective Schools stuff, Invitational Schools stuff.

In order for a school to participate, someone has to get in contact with Dr. Maynard (he is going to be inviting schools to join at this meeting at Stonewall Jackson resort that I’m trying to get details on) and if 65% of the school faculty is willing to do the development and follow the program, the school can be a model school and in this “League” for “from Blue Ribbon to Gold Medal” schools.

So, my current thing is to spread the word, to get teachers and administrators at local schools (especially those that my children will attend!) to buy into this.

Larry Lezotte quotes Ron Edmunds:

We can, whenever and wherever we choose, successfully teach all children whose schooling is of interest to us. We already know more than we need to do that. Whether or not we do it must finally depend on how we feel about the fact that we haven’t so far.

http://www.effectiveschools.com/downloads/RevEv.pdf

I know that many teachers do wonderful things with lots of students, but from looking at our achievement results (compared internationally, by NAEP, for example) and graduation rates, I think that there is still room to improve with some of our students. Dr. Maynard is suggesting some new approaches that have their bases in current educational research, and, personally, I cannot see how improving the engagement of the students can do anything but raise their actual achievement and learning. I’m sure that some of it will be more, work, at least in the short term, but with the added support of the MU program, this might not be such a painful way to make a change.

Focus on the "League of Schools" model schools?

goodnessgraciouswv — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 19:12:54 +0000

I met with Dr. Stan Maynard (MU, June Harless Center) this morning to ask him about the “model” school at Kellogg Elementary and about the possibility of getting OUR schools to be included in his program. So, first, if you don’t know about it, MU has already had a “practice” model school for the 21st Century program for k-2 at Kellogg Elementary (Wayne County, Westmoreland) for the last couple of years. Everyone says it is great. They are expanding that program to k-5 and soon to k-8. Dr. Maynard told me all about the different components of it (see them via the Harless Center link), which include each grade learning in depth about a different continent (so that by the end of 5th grade they have learned REAL stuff about all of the continents, including meeting a college student from there and doing email/podcasts with children in a school there); foreign language instruction for 90-minutes per week with all the k-5 kids; REAL science with a special new curriculum custom-designed by a high school science teacher; an adapted math curriculum using real world applications, including GPS; community partnerships that include afterschool clubs in areas like LEGOs, social skills, economics, astronomy, violin lessons, webpage design… He referred to the Invitational School concept of William Purkey (see link) and the Effective Schools movement (see link) of Larry Lazotte being sortof the context for all this academic work. He will be making an invitation to the public schools around WV to join his “League of Schools” and to make Blue Ribbon Schools into Gold Medal Schools–making the schools not just good for West Virginia, but able to compete internationally (like on the NAEP test scores–see more links). I will try to get more information about it from him, but he is issuing the invitations at the Center for Professional Development meeting in a couple of weeks at Stonewall Jackson retreat. Someone from the school needs to express an interest in joining and then 65-70% of the faculty will need to buy-in and agree to do the training & development necessary to put the model program in place. Dr. Maynard is hoping to get 100 schools interested in modeling and has plans for quantitative and qualitative assessments of the schools and the program. The participants in the League will then meet once or twice a year to have national speakers and breakout sessions to share how the program is working for them, how they have tweaked it, etc. I did ask Dr. Maynard specifically about this school I’d like to have opened in the Miller building and if he had suggestions for us about it. He thinks that if we can get the schools that we have now to participate in the League, we may be able to get the small high school opened by the BOE as the program grows. It sounded like he may have spoken briefly with Superintendent Smith about my proposal and it was not completely rejected. The “drag” thing is that the model for the League schools is very much on a k-8 configuration (which I love), but I fear Cabell County has sortof written this off already with their new, consolidated middle school and plans to consolidate Enslow & Beverly Hills. The feet follow the money, right? Anyhow, Dr. Maynard said that the schools do not HAVE to be k-8 in one building, provided that some kids can go all the way up from k to 8 using the same sort of educational model. But, I am not sure where that leaves a 6-12 school. I told him that honestly, 6-12 isn’t the grade configuration I would have picked, but I don’t want my kids to have to go to either the middle or high schools the way they are, so that was what I suggested. Anyhow, when I get more info about the League, I’ll be sure to pass it on. It would be great if we could bug ALL of the teachers and administrators that we know about getting into the League, so that our kids could all be in great programs like they are planning for Kellogg. It is my plan to get started with the Southside Elementary and Huntington Middle people ASAP. Anyone know “people” at HMS??