leadership in high schools

Last week I attended a Faculty meeting at Ripley Central School.  I was there by invitation to speak on behalf of the instructional programs housed at the Hewes Center, Erie 2 CC BOCES.  As a precursor to my formal introductions, the High School Principal, Sue Hammond, had taken my suggestion and asked the Faculty last month to watch Sir Ken Robinson a presenter featured on TED TALKS ( Ref: Google this).  I am always humbled by these opportunities to address school audiences or for that matter any audience, especially when I am speaking about what I am so passionate about - education and the programs I work with at the Hewes Center - Alternative and Special Education.  I am humbled not on my own account alone but on account of the weight and responsibility I bear when I speak for the Faculty and Staff I work with.  I know that this Faculty and Staff keep me motivated, teach me anew every day and demand that I be an excellent leader and speaker!  So here goes……..in writing.

I spoke to the Ripley Faculty as one educator to another. Who is the Alternative Education student?  I shared with the Faculty our philosophy, our organization, our school culture, our successes and our sad failures.  I talked of the need to identify students early because this way we can return students to their home schools and local communities faster.  Early identification always means fewer drop outs;   this has been played out time and time again  in  our BOCES .  Rural Schools fight three battles in my mind -  poverty,  lack of lack of social opportunities to interact with other young people and dysfunction caused by a distressed family structure that provides little stimulation for the growing mind.  My message to the Faculty is that together, we as educators, whether we are located in component schools or in our BOCES, are fighting an uphill battle to reclaim our youth, invigorate our local communities and stymie the brain drain from Western New York.  It is my contention that educators, politicians and tax payers in Chautauqua County need to pay attention to the Alternative and Special Education Student populations that we work with because these young people are not as mobile as their honor roll counterparts.  These student populations tend to stay home and attend local colleges.  They tend to return home and invest in this county because they are familiar with its norms and because they value family despite how many times this institution has disappointed them.  Our collective future are these youth.  I distinguished between the Part 100 Regulations and Part 200 Regulations that guide our practices.  In essence the Alternative Education student is made up of regular, special ed classified with general education integration and 504 plan students. 

Surprises for the Faculty at Ripley:

We do not have a standing Library or Librarian on our campus?  Ans.  We have direct access to the wealth of the BOCES media and resource library.

We are not a school.  We are a BOCES cooperative.  The social dances, sports teams, music and dance programs exist in public schools.  Our BOCES programs cannot fully replicate the school community because our students are drawn to us from all over, hence the student is not in essence a BOCES student but a Ripley(or any other school district)  student and all social and sports affiliations need to be made with reference to the home school not BOCES.  This is why at all in-takes, our students are encouraged to maintain full communication with, and take advantage of, opportunities in their home schools. 

Referring a student to the administration for an out of district placement is a huge professional responsibility and has to be guided by much deliberate thinking and research.  This is because the suggestion to seek an out of district placement means that the student is going to be placed outside of his local and school community and with that, social interactions and opportunities to form connections in the local community are interuppted. 

Students who attend BOCES are always the students of their districts.  We recommend credit, we do not award it nor do we hand out graduation diplomas. 

My time spent with the Faculty and Staff of Ripley Central School was rewarding and refreshing.  The warm welcome I received will sustain my work this year.  Ripley Faculty who are interested in our BOCES programs have been invited to seek professional opportunities to visit our Hewes Center. 

After days of careful rumination, my mind is set.  Studying the needs of the Alternative Education program at the Hewes Center and reviewing the needs of our students, I have decided that the position can be that of a Teacher’s Aide.  We have an effective Teacher Assistant in place.  We need a Teacher’s Aide because this position does not demand excellent academic skills but rather skills that reach deep down into the missing parent links that most of our students crave.  The position calls for a surrogate adult who understands the needs of students to graduate through a High School programs, and how these program demands will exact a toll on students which will result in behavior outbursts, avoidance and the failure excuses we in the program hear everyday.   Fran G. has been called many things by both kids and faculty however Leighton S. our counselor has coined the best title for her.  “Fran is a mother.”  I will go a step farther she is a mom to little kids in big bodies.  Here is this power house of a woman who students let into their “Quality World”.  Alternative Education students permit you into their quality world, the world of Glasser.  You cannot force your way in.  You cannot wait to be invited.  You simply arrive, because of your presence, the trust you build.  The students will be able to tell if you “fake them out”,  and if you do, you will get nothing but grief for your efforts.  As Julio Z. and Jorge tell me “do you feel us?”.  Yes we have to “feel’ them, understand their issues without giving them excuses and without cutting them breaks for what life has dealt them. 

My reference point is the poor, parent less child in a third world country who because of necessity becomes a child soldier, or an aids orphan being raised by a grandparent, yet knows that education is the ladder out of deprivation and the chance to salvage the family name.  I have seen children like these succeed so I know the Alternative Education student can. 

Yesterday I had the opportunity to evaluate a middle school teacher. The subject was ELA the book The Bridge to Terabithia. Grade Level: 6. What joy it was to see the lesson go like clockwork. My instructions to the teacher were that I wanted to see her adapt her lesson to a one posted on any of the educational websites. She did not disappoint me. With her adaptations the lesson was engaging, showed variety, involved all students, had evidence of all ELA standards and teaching and learning was successfully accomplished.
Today, I had the opportunity to evaluate the Physical Education Teacher. The Grade Level was High School mixed, Alt. Ed. The teacher was enthusiastic, the students impressed me with their cooperation and ability to engage in the entire lesson without complaint. The teacher has been pushing the total body work out. He started the year off with teaching students about Body Mass Indices and worked in conjunction with the school nurse to reiterate and support the need for school wide health initiatives. The students knew exactly what the routines were, went around the gym and worked out on various exercise equipment without coercion. I cannot wait to write up these two evaluations!
Earlier this morning, I accompanied a sullen young woman, a senior to the gym. Her complaint was that the gym teacher above did not connect with her. What I witnessed was a sullen young lady who refused to participate in the class. She waited in vain for the teacher to engage her in this negativity. I was so tempted to work the machines myself; I got on a leg exercise machine that counts miles and calories. Wouldn’t you know that the secretary walked in just while I was enjoying myself the most? I had got on to motivate the sullen student, the secretary’s comment? “So this is how you have fun huh?” I got off immediately and hurried off to another school crisis.

This is in response to a recent article I read in our local newspaper, The Post-Journal which referenced the notion that American High Schools are largely drop out factories for large numbers of minority, disenfranchised, and special ed., students. The article made me wonder about what we are doing in the Alternative and Special Education programs. Is all our good work for naught if students go out and get arrested and put in prison, get drunk, total their cars, cause injury to others, make poor choices, this when on paper they are passing the Regents Exams, (standard high school exit exams in New York State) and can graduate? Our Schools should not be drop out factories if alternative education programs are supported by early identification of students at elem and middle school and if special ed. programs are populated by students who come in through the right door first, not necessarily Alternative Education just because it is a cheaper option and meets the criteria of intervening program before placement in Special Ed more restrictive classrooms.
What is the Hewes Center answer to the above? A 1:8:1 option for the Special Ed. High School? A 1:12:1 class that will meet the needs of that middling population which straddles both alt. and special ed. - the classified, 504, declassified or never classified student?. Failure is not an Option, not when we have effective special and alt. ed high school programs that lead to graduation;  programs that address the issue of student morale and conscience development. We need to do both,  teach our kids so that they can graduate and teach them how to be safe in a civilized society where they do not get to set the rules and break them at will.
This piece is dedicated to the teacher Cindy J who wrote up a student for throwing a desk and punching a wall in the school. She asked for criminal mischief charges while at the same time understanding how fragile her student is and wondering if he will graduate this June. Her caring tells me he will - tough love. Thanks Cindy!

I was privileged to be called up, together with 3 distinguished teachers who work in Special, Alternative and Career and Technical Education within Erie 2-CC-BOCES, to speak in front of our Board of Education and component school district officials comprising school board members and district personnel. We each spoke about our what learning we came away with from the High Schools New Face Conf., in Ellicottville. Each of us attended different cohorts - Creating, Engaging, Connecting and Leading. From it all, we took away perspectives that inform our work as educators and influence our relations with our colleagues. I was very impressed with the cumulative effects of this learning within our BOCES and how it is impacting the life of our students. P. Mihalko a Career and Technical Ed. teacher specializing in Auto body repair has opened up a blog for his students and taken it a step further. He emails attachments of home work to parents, when he discovered some parents could not open up attachments, he developed an instruction sheet for them to access. Not only is he reaching his students through technology but he is reaching into the home and making students education a family priority. Our BOCES Board invested in this teaching-learning opportunity and got to witness first hand the impact of this investment.