The Barrier of Time

I have been thinking about the structure of our school calendar for a long time. It is incredibly difficult to lead complex change within our current calendar. Staff development for educators often occurs during small chunks of time throughout the year (early outs and late starts). Due to our school calendar a considerable amount of time passes between each training. This makes it difficult to develop momentum and continuity from one training to the next. Quality staff development should be continuous and job-embedded. Due to our schedule and the busyness of the school day, learning something new is often placed on the back burner due to more pressing issues.

I did a small study of the large employers within our community. I wanted to see how the other large employers invest in staff development. The graph below compares the annual amount of hours for staff development for each employee classification.

Note: HAMC = Heart of America Medical Center, JD = John Deere, Bremer Bank, FIB = First International Bank, and RPSD = Rugby Public School District. 

Unfortunately, I wasn’t shocked from the data in the chart above. Our teachers receive significantly less staff development than other professional positions within our community. This is a problem and schools need to build more time for staff development into their schedule. We should be investing in our teachers and support staff like the hospital, banks, and area agricultural businesses. 

Here are our core initiatives: 

Professional Learning Communities 

Teachers are grouped by grade level and subject area and these meetings occur every Wednesday from 8:00 - 9:00 AM. Each group focuses on these four questions: 1) What do we want students to know and be able to do? 2) How will we know if they can do it? 3) What will we do for students who already can do what is expected? 4) What will we do to support and help students who have not achieved the standards?

Standards-Based and Competency-Based Learning

Students at Ely Elementary have been receiving what we call a standards-based report card throughout their school experience. This method of reporting progress is helpful to parents and educators to identify weak areas for the student. It allows teachers and support staff to apply appropriate interventions to improve these identified areas. 

Social and Emotional Wellness

A recent student survey indicated that our students are less happy and have been experiencing an increase in depression. The reported increase in depression is not a localized problem that is only impacting our community. State and national survey results suggest that this is a state and national problem for adolescents and adults. To be proactive, we have recently implemented a curriculum that focuses on social and emotional wellness. All students take part in social and emotional wellness activities on a weekly basis. 

Literacy Curriculum and Instruction

Our school district was awarded a $700,000 Striving Readers Grant to focus on literacy from birth to grade 12. We have purchased a new English and Language Arts curriculum for grades K-6. We have also purchased a new intervention curriculum for struggling readers as well. These new curricula will be implemented during the 2019-2020 school year. 

Each of the above mentioned core initiatives require an immense amount of time to carry out with fidelity. For us to continue to build a great school system, we need more time. We are in the midst of developing a calendar that will address the time issue. The proposed calendar will provide 60 hours of staff development time along with approximately 30 hours of late start time for teacher collaboration. We believe the new calendar for the 2019-2020 school year will help us manage our initiatives in a more efficient way. The 2019-2020 school calendar will be approved within the next few months.