leadership in high schools

6 teachers with general and special education have attended the High Schools New Face Conference developed and directed by the Joint management teams of the Western New York BOCES.  Here is the impact so far:

1. 3 teacher blogs
2. 1 administrator blog
3. 2 teacher web pages
4. Teacher use of 7 smart boards which has led to interactive student learning and engagement
5. use of USB memory sticks by faculty and students
6. Teacher use of IPODs
7. a more positive outlook of student outcomes by all who work with them
8. Program collaboration with local colleges sparked by student visitations and resulting in grater student enrollments in post-secondary education
9. Program collaboration with local agencies including Chautauqua Works this past summer 2008, resulting in student employment both on and off campus
10. school wide support and collaboration with local capacity artists and the Southern Chautauqua County Arts Council which has led to a NYS arts council grant last year which brought local puppeteers into our school programs and the writing of a bigger grant that will lead hopefully to school wide arts infusion. 
11. The opening of a self-contained high school classroom focussed on a wholistic approach to education including work force preparation and the development of work ready skills - computer data entry, desk top publishing etc.
12. The implementation of two English Literature grants - Read Across America and the Cornell University Reading project in 2008.  Novels supported by both programs include To Kill A Mockingbird and Celebrating Abraham Lincoln.
13. Recognition by NAMI, National Association for the Mentally ILL and the donation of 6 copies of the book Crazy by Pete Early.  On Oct. 12, 2008 I attended the authors presentation at Jamestown Community College, Jamestown, NY and had him sign two copies of his book for Jim Hedlund and Phyllis Caloren, High School English Teachers who work with adolescent “consumers”. 
14. Monthly student assemblies/field trips aimed at broadening the perspectives of high school students on a variety of issues
15. Weekly departmental team meetings - high school, middle school and elementary aimed at increasing professional dialogue between teachers and with the administration. 
16. A set faculty meeting agenda celebrating teachers, instructional innovation, use of technology and sharing of new teaching strategies/ideas. 

The next phase of this 2 year project is to monitor the impact of High Schools New Face Conferences in 06/07/08 on the entire campus of Hewes including instructors in our Career and Technical Programs.  A wiki developed for this purpose will send out invitations to all who attended these conferences;  a summary report will be developed and shared with other Erie 2 CC BOCES Centers in order to study the impact of this learning adventure on instruction and student learning. 

Today we have 6 students registered in the classroom, a teacher’s aide but no appointed special education, content certified teacher.  Three things are possibly at play:

All teachers qualified for this position and certified in New York state are employed within schools in the area

There exist no teachers in the area who meet the qualifications of this position as evidenced by the open position

The position being opened in the 5th week of the new school year has not garnered the interest of qualified candidates who are out in the employment pool and who perhaps have made commitments to employers in fields other that education

My concern at this point as that we get a teacher as soon as possible for this classroom that is comprised of eager students, willing and trusting in our school system - students who believe they have a future and that future is a high school diploma, a job after school, college or a trade school.  I believe in this student population and I believe that we shall find this teacher to join our exciting instructional team at the Hewes Center. 

If you are that person, please contact me via this blog post or email our Human Resources Director, JoAnn Johnston at jjohnston@e2ccb.org.  You will need a cover letter, a professional resume, official college transcripts, three letters of reference, three telephone references (different from the written references) and a completed Erie 2 CC BOCES professional application.  The latter can be downloaded from our official website. 

Do you have other thoughts/ideas that might affect why the job pool is so shallow in our area?  I know there are teachers out there who want to make a difference in students lives - where are you?

Together with Kevin Bourgoine, Supervisor, the teachers and I at the Hewes Center have embarked on a positive behavior involving school cultural change for high school students in our instructional programs - both Alternative and Special Education.  At the recent Superintendent’s Conference Day for Teachers and Related Service Professionals - counselors, speech teachers, occupational and physical therapists, two important sessions were offered - Dr. Larry Mahady, a positive behavior specialist who is a professor at SUNY Fredonia spoke about instilling a behavior plans for classroom teachers and programs that are student focused;  Raising Kane was a movie that was shown about student behavior.  These two offerings are are impetus to us as a faculty developing a sound behavior plan that can be positively modelled for students and supported by all faculty and staff.  Faculty will meet weekly to explore ideas and commit their thoughts to paper.  Facilitators have been chosen for these deliberate meetings and weekly sessions will be moderated.  Our facilitators for this important work chosen both by a vote of approval and by volunteering are Cindy Jackson, social studies teacher, Wendy Darling, counselor and Thea Kester, certified social studies teacher, counselor and presently the ISS/OSS teacher. 

We have begun these discussions via weekly team meetings involving the High School teachers at Hewes.  At today’s meeting, Kevin and I, program supervisors, distributed student incentives that teachers can use at their discretion with students, complimenting them for positive behavior and growth.  The Pass it on Effect (Doing Good and Passing it on) is I believe on its way to taking hold at Hewes. 

We will institute this requirement this year for all high school seniors graduating this June 09. 

How many hours are other schools requiring students to complete?  What unique examples exist of community service within the school setting?

• How should schools attend to the management needs of students who require a smaller setting, more restrictive, yet at the same time need to be academically challenged and integrated with their general education peers?
• If co-teaching is possible, what are the merits of this program for students who loose the nurturing, caring, safe environment of a special needs 1:6:1 or 1:8:1 classroom?
• What are the disadvantages of integrating special needs students using a co-teaching model?
• With NCLB and the new certified requirements for Special Ed. teachers in the content areas, will the need to use co-teaching diminish? 
• Was co-teaching “invented” so that special ed. highly qualified teachers could gain exposure to content and thus pave the way to higher academic instruction and student expectations for spec. ed. students?
• Is co-teaching only the most successful when the special education teacher is certified to teach the given content area and thus can fluidly move and understand concepts within the various content subjects?  If this is true does this mean that a highly qualified teacher of special education, grades 7-12 can only provide  “watered down” instructional content because he/she cannot be expected to understand and teach high school content to the same degree that a general education teacher can? 

Points to Ponder:

A special ed. teacher understands accommodations and modifications.  He/she can examine content and present it in a way that is palatable to special needs students.  This has been proved at the Hewes Center and has resulted in students passing regents exams. 

Teachers, special education teachers included are students themselves, learning is possible at whatever age therefore content can be learned and taught to others because teachers understand pedagogy and can apply learning and teaching strategies to all content.  What is needed in all cases in a genuine interest in and an affinity for a particular subject.  The challenge is how to take material and plan a lesson using that material which leads to teaching and learning.  Co-teaching provides special education teachers the opportunity to teach lessons in unique and interesting ways using holistic approaches which challenge age groups rather that specific spec. ed or gen. ed populations. 

At the Hewes Center, we have chosen a path to improve and provide more challenging instructional practises, demand higher academic performance from students - learner outcomes and broaden access of students to regents diploma level curriculum.  Co-teaching has worked for us.  Yes there are kinks in our system,  but we have to work out these kinks under the the umbrella of Part 100 regs which is general education and to which all students belong, and then modify our path and specify our direction under part 200 regulations which classifies some students.