I know it has been a LONG time since I have posted and there are a number of reasons for that but, right now, I am hoping to solicit the wisdom and experience of my PLN as my staff and I look at what we have identified as significant issues in our school.
I work as the Vice-Principal in a Community School. Our student body is extremely diverse in culture and ethnicity. About one third of our students are refugees or immigrant English Language Learners from all over the world. About one third of our students are Canadian First Nations and Metis and the remainder are Caucasian Canadians. Many of our families are living in poverty, the majority of our students are being raised by single mothers who are often working outside of the home for shifts and long periods of time.
We are faced with a great number of challenges and are working hard to create an atmosphere that is stable and predictable for our students who struggle with change. We want to focus on learning, especially in key areas of literacy and numeracy as many of our students are not reading or computing at grade level expectations. We know there is a great deal of research but, right now, I think we would benefit from the wisdom and authenticity of real experiences from real people who are currently "in the trenches". I am hoping that you will be able to comment on what you are doing in our key areas below and what is and isn't working for you. Please forward my request onto your PLN or anyone who might be able to share their wisdom with us! Thank you for your assistance! I sincerely look forward to your input!
1. Transitions: Our students struggle with any type of transition, both physical (place to place) and internal (teacher to teacher or class to class). With preparation time as part of our contract, it is imperative that our students work with some other teachers and travel to places like the gymnasium, music room etc. Even traveling to and from the washrooms creates some problems. Have you done anything innovative to control transitions or to minimize them in any way? Please share your successes!
2. Recess: We have tried implementing a staggered recess with half of our students going out at one time and then the other half at a different time. While this has reduced some of the traffic to the office it has far from eliminated it. Our students struggle with unstructured time. Part of this stems from lack of playground equipment and things to do (we are working on improving this) but another part of this stems from our students lack of problem solving skills. Most problems are resolved by fight or flight and, unfortunately, these problems occur quite regularly. Is anyone doing anything creative with recess time that might be replicable? We have two 15 minute recess periods; one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Lunch hour is also a struggle. Students have 45 minutes to eat in their lunchrooms followed by 15 minutes on the playground. This 15 minutes is not staggered and all of our students are outside at once. We see the same issues at lunch time as we do the rest of the day.
3. Student Behaviour: We have explored the possibility of programs like PBIS. Our students have difficulty regulating themselves and their behaviour. Ideally, we need to empower teachers to manage these behaviours in the classroom rather than just sending children to the office. We would like the teachers to help our students to develop self-regulation strategies and to foster and reinforce them. While many teachers are experimenting with many different methods, none are being implemented school-wide with fidelity. I would love nuts and bolts input from someone who has "been there, done that". How did you go about developing and implementing a school wide plan? How do we get the teachers on board with this plan? What kind of professional development did you offer your staff to support them in this? What kind of results have you seen?
Thank you so much for any and all advice and assistance. I am counting on the experience and wisdom of my peers to provide me with some creative ideas to move forward!
PLEASE COMMENT!
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