Alternative Education Survey Discussion

Topic:  Discuss the connection between the school administration and stated vision of the school.

Guiding questions/thoughts:

Is the vision something that can be expressed and supported by leadership?

What avenues exist now for parents to get a feeling for the support of the vision by school administration?

Is supporting the vision something you would put a high priority on for the duties of a school administrator?

People are unsure about vision of school.  It’s not discussed enough for people to have a good understanding of the vision.  A more concise vision would be easier to remember, but may not necessarily help the school.

Principal and AP do not articulate the vision, the wonderful teachers do.  There is no overarching vision.  The vision is individual on who you ask.

Not a lot of direction from admin in terms of the vision.

Circulate:

• Put in Bulletin
• Classrooms
• Back door
• Administrators should by synthesizing what is happening in classroom.
• Do a better job of promoting within the community.
• Jodee’s bulletin – how is our vision being realized this week?
• All school events

Topic:  Exploring the Vision Statement

Guiding questions:

What do you love about it?

What’s missing?

Do you feel like it is useful in guiding the direction of the school?

“I think it’s perfect”

What should be included in mission statement but isn’t:

1. Relationships – between students and teachers, students and others
2. Emphasize community in community

Jodee:  wants to focus more on experiential aspect as major point of our being alternative esp. given the electronic non-connectedness increasingly defining kids’ lives.

“Difficult to put in a hall” - can we?

“It’s complex just like Salmon Bay”

• Keep it living vs. a hardened dogma (dead)
• How to keep, every year, giving it new birth
• Pick a single line from the vision to focus on each year
• Would the students get it?  Can we make a kid version?
• How to make parents see it more
• How important it is
• How it might be introduced to parents as a very important touchstone for their ongoing experience of the school
• For understanding the discussing their feelings both of what’s not going right and what is and/or could be made even stronger (build on its success)
• Remember long history of the crafting of the statement – it was a very unifying process for the people (teachers) involved
• Michelle could tie her “what I saw today” into vision statement in the Bulletin
• Jodee:  3 rules have been internalized by kids – in a good way!

Topic:  Talk about the relationship between teachers, parents and administration in areas like curriculum, school structure, and daily life in the classroom.

Guiding questions:

What kind of role should parents have in these areas?

What do you understand the decision-making process to be for these areas?

What do you know about the Building Leadership Team?

One view: parents are a partner, should not have input to make decisions, but parents want to be heard by leadership   **we have been hearing that parents are not feeling heard**

Another view: parents should have input, want handwriting curriculum, grammar

Unless parents attend FOSB meetings, they probably don’t know much/anything about BLT

Publish BLT agendas, make available

Coffee Hour – vary times/days, have leadership attend and present a topic to accommodate a variety of people.

We want to know what our teachers think.  We love when they come to FOSB and are part of the discussion.

Have a panel of teachers

Topic:  Discuss your views on alternative education vs. traditional education in terms of academic rigor.

Guiding questions:

What is the definition of rigor?

Is there a difference?

Does the child development play a role in appropriate levels of rigor?

Trad education rigor gauged by:  time spent on topic in classroom, amount of prescribed work, level/difficulties, topical weighting of 3 Rs vs. artistic pursuits in classroom, staff inclinations

Alt ed rigor gauged by:  where/how each student finds challenge.  Every student challenged, differentiation of teaching at classroom level.

Thoughts about rigor and Salmon Bay:

• Our community is self-selecting, not based on random assignment
• Does rigor apply to only test scores, or also emotional and social components of education?
• Differentiation (child-oriented teaching, meeting the child where s/he is) requires more planning
• We are better at addressing kids below achievement level than those who’ve reached the ceiling.
• Sad that multi-age goes away in the expansion.
• Kids aren’t getting the feedback they need for the work that they do.  Portfolio assessment is not sufficient.