Best Practices

I read through the best pracites website and came to realize two things:

1. we are well ahead of the curve when it comes to reflective practice
2. we are not alone in recognizing the value in reflective practice

I could really see this working in our school.... I think our students would have much to say!

FRIDAY TI / ADVISORY

We looked through several essays of students interested in taking on the Teaching Institute next year. We first brainstormed what qualities we should look for, created a rubric then selected 12 candidates along with the 15 Juniors who already we guaranteed spots. We concluded that the pool needed to be much deeper to choose from. We need to share our positive experiences with our students hoping to inspire them to partake in the Teaching Institute internship. Hopefully with a dedicated person for Montessori our students will shape the program. Students should be vying for acceptance into the program instead of passively expecting it. We have a vision in the school; TI and Advisory are both part of this vision.

Once again, I feel it is important to mention that Advisory is the most expensive program we have at this school, the lessons for advisory must be planned and center on school wide values and modeling best pedagogical practices. If you need help please let me know…..(or click here)

I was personally concerned that this past Friday there was much chaos during Advisory, from and outsider venturing toward our campus, it looked much like wasted NYC BOE $$$. We do not want to jeopardize this program for our students because we were to shy to ask for help. Advisories have been pulled from other schools because teachers failed to instill academic rigor into them. Are we doing anything to avoid this? Can we do this? The concept paper suggested work around the Teaching Institute. Maybe this needs to happen?

The team

Today I was able to attend presentations of students’ projects in Ryba's class. I was definitely impressed at the level of creativity and ability to use technology our freshmen posses. I hope we can build on that next year. One concern which is always a concern is the inherent plagiarism I noticed.. Getting kids to the next level and creating rather than regurgitating I guess is always going to be a challenge. We should definitely raise our expectation levels of our students and have them author material right from freshmen year... Although not a commonly held thought I do believe our freshmen can do the work...

Task at Hand

We have come a long way since Spetember. I think we need to look foward to next year but lets not forget our immediate work at hand. We still have amazing opporunties before us. Tamara has created an At Risk Student at a glance worksheet and even more importantly taken action as to implementing the fresh idea. setting up multiple parent meeting for Tuesday Mornings (20min intervals) and walking away with an action plan is priceless. I look foward to sitting in on one of these meetings to see how effective this stream lined process will work.