Background:
This school is a state school in the Douglas County School District. Douglas County is an affluent county but the school has gone through some dramatic changes in recent years with the introduction of the high stake “No Child Left Behind” policy and with a restructure of staffing in the school district, including the abolition of the teachers union. I got the picture from teachers I spoke to morale was not high amongst some teachers.
 |
| Maggie outside Castle Rock Elementary |
Politics aside, I was keen to visit CRE for two reasons; It is a State school and provides a point of comparison with the independent schools I am visiting and secondly, I worked at CRE 23 years ago as a fourth grade teacher, whilst on a teaching exchange so I was interested to see how the school had changed and evolved.
Castle Rock has 426 students K-6 Grade. Although Douglas County is an affluent area the school still has 35% reduced or free lunches.
 |
| School's student Learner Qualities. |
My host was Principal, Kelly Ursetta. She has been Principal of CRE for 3 years.
The school has 1:2 ratio of devices in the school. K-2 Grade classes have iPads and the 3-6 Grade classes use Chromebooks.
Innovations:
The
school has put a lot of work in to environment education and the feature of
this is their Habitat project. This is a joint project with the local
community. It involves developing a nature trail in a reserve adjacent to the
school. Each class has a time (45mins - 1 hour/week) to go and work on the
Habitat and many of the grade levels have special projects within the Habitat
they are working on. In the weekend community members also come and help with
the Habitat and they also have some financial support from the local
council.
 |
| A wetland area on the School's Habitat Trail |
 |
| Students use QR codes as a way for students/ parents/ visitors to link to the Habitat Blog and gain information about each area of the Habitat. |
For their
efforts developing the Habitat, and their recycling and energy saving measures,
the school has been awarded a Green Flag award, similar to our Enviro-schools
awards. The only difference is the Green Flag Award is worth $8000/annually to
the school. That money has gone into more environmental projects in the
school.
In the
States many schools like to flag to the public the particular areas they are
good at or specialise in. I saw Elementary schools that specialised in Science
and Technology and others that called themselves Schools of the Arts. Castle
Rock is very much recognised for it's environmental work and within the school
many of the integrated topics studied are on an environmental theme.
The
school uses a Project Based Learning approach to topic studies and it was
pleasing to see the range of text books that occupied the classrooms in the 90s
had disappeared, apart from Mathematics.
The
district dictated "reverse" planning method has its merits but it
means the students have less ownership of the Learning Outcomes.
However the students are getting the opportunity to do their own self-directed
Passions projects. Kelly said that their focus for PD had been around big
picture pedagogy - Innovation, high engagement, student centred teaching and
learning.  |
| Schools Project Based Learning Model. |
One
innovative idea around PD is similar to HSS ICT workshops last year but takes
it a step further. They call it a Cafe Session. It starts with staff getting
together for coffee and cakes and the presenters for the day, who are generally
staff members, present a preview of what their workshop will be on that day.
There are always three choices on offer. From there staff choose the workshop
they wish to attend and go off with the presenter to their room. Topics covered
could be eLearning, big picture pedagogy, an environment topic or core subjects.
The staff don't have to go to all sessions but if there was enough interest the
session could be repeated. In a system where PD budgets are limited this is a
good use of resources and staff skills and knowledge.
Reflection:
Kelly talked about her challenges and like many
schools finds staff Performance management a huge task. This was backed up when
talking to some Douglas County Teachers who said the implementation of
performance pay has increased work and caused tension in schools. One teacher said
it is particularly disappointing when he had achieved to
an advanced teachers level and then wasn't paid the incentive
promised! Kelly commented that one of her challenges has been maintaining staff
and this is possibly an outcome of Douglas County Districts demands and
expectations on teachers
Clearly
political interference has had some morale issues and caused some good teachers
to feel not as valued. However, despite this I found Castle Rock Elementary a
really positive place and the students were focused on their learning, friendly
and articulate. I think despite whatever is going on behind the
scenes at District level, Kelly and her team have created a warm and
friendly learning environment.
Kelly did
comment that one of the biggest on-going challenges is ensuring they maintain
the momentum around the Habitat. They need passionate teachers to drive the
project and ensure it is well maintained and utilised by the school. This is a
bit like the HSS radio station, the concept has huge potential but is only as
good as we allow it to be. Staff need to believe in it and see it as
worthwhile. Saying that, the concept of the Habitat is a good one. Each year
our seniors go off and plant trees in our community. It is a nice way for us to
give back to the community, however, students have very little ownership of the
project and after the planting is done many wouldn't spare another thought for
what they have done. It was something they had to do.
If with
the council and maybe the Environment Centre we identified an area near the
school that we could maintain and develop for the community and all students
could have an opportunity to contribute, I think students would feel a greater
degree of ownership.
The Cafe Session was a great idea to utilise the skills within your
staff and not just in eLearning. It gives staff an opportunity to step up and
share and having three groups it means the staff are split into smaller groups
which means each workshop will have smaller numbers and staff can really delve
into the topic.
Project Based Learning (PBL), like Inquiry learning, is a good concept but the reverse planning means teachers are the ones directing the outcome. The model is one being promoted to the schools by the school district and hasn't been developed by the school. Also like many of the Inquiry models that exist in NZ schools, the PBL model is linear. Children follow it in predetermined steps. This limits flexibility as students often like to start at different places in the process. They may not need the early stages because they may already have that knowledge. They may want to start with a prototype or an outcome and work back to find why they are having issues or challenges with their outcome. A classic Kiwi example of this is the SAUCE model developed in Spotswood School for Spotswood School but then their enterprising Principal went and touted it across the country. Many schools took it on but no-one, I don't think, owned it except Spotswood School. It was flawed in its design as it was linear and because staff had it presented to them as "This is our model," they didn't own it and gradually it died a natural death.
After bagging the School district, I think the district concept reined in and with a non-political agenda is a good one. The district does a lot of the admin and has the buying power and influence of a large organisation. It also has a big picture view of the needs across the district and can provide the quality PD and resourcing needed. It would also ensure better transition and genuine linkage between Primary, Intermediate and Secondary. It would take away a lot of the competition that has developed out of the "Tomorrows Schools" self-governing model. At the moment we are islands and we waste a lot of resources doing things for ourselves that would collectively benefit all schools. With economies of scale there are winner schools (the big ones) and loser schools. The Nelson City COS is a step in the right direction and after reflection on the School District Concept I believe the possibilities are exciting.
Implications for HSS
As mentioned the Habitat idea is a good one and if we could find an area
near the school, maybe on the Grampians, that we could develop with Council
support that would be a really positive initiative for the school. It would
require some passionate staff, students and even parents/ grandparents to drive
it and could also be linked with our Enviro-group but not exclusively for
them.
The Cafe Session could be something we do with our Inquiry groups. Each
Inquiry group has one or two presenters (This could rotate). The group prepares
a workshop and the presenter presents it. The other members of the group attend
workshops by other inquiry groups. This could be a really effective way of
sharing the work of the inquiry teams and getting everyone involved.
We need to look carefully at our student inquiry model - do we all own
it? Does it provide students with the flexibility students need? How do we plan
for it? These are some good mid-year review questions we can ask ourselves and
a good discussion point for Pedagogy Inquiry group.
 |
| Castle Rock from CRE |
No comments:
Post a Comment