Including Parents in the Responsive Classroom Approach

Do you remember the joy and exhilaration regarding the upcoming school year after your Responsive Classroom (RC) workshop week? What a time of refreshing ideas and a whole new mindset regarding your beliefs in children and how they learn best. As you successfully navigated through the first six weeks of school, what feedback did parents give to you? Did they see a change in their child’s attitudes and beliefs about towards school? Including parents in the process of creating a safe and joyful classroom environment is often a challenge faced by teachers who are just implementing the RC approach. Parents are the pivotal link in creating a united front of success for our children. When we send messages to children and those messages are reinforced at home, a child will understand boundaries and achieve the high expectations. The question that remains is how best to include parents in the learning process as your whole class embraces RC. My advice would be three-fold: informational parent letters regarding the major components of the RC approach, one to one meeting with the families of your students often called a hopes and dreams conference, and frequent proactive communication so parents can reinforce social/academic learning outcomes at home. Parent informational letters can be sent home throughout the year to help explain and reinforce your philosophy and approach towards learning. This is an example of a parent letter that I would send home regarding the importance of interactive modeling. XXXXXX School works hard at providing your student with a learning environment that supports and challenges all who enter our doors. One of our guiding principles is that how the children learn is as important as what they learn. One way that we support students is through modeling. As parents, you know how much children watch and imitate all that is around them. The same holds true in the classroom. There are certain procedures or activities that require one way of doing things that all understand and can follow. Modeling is defined as a teacher or a child performing a specific behavior while others watch and then imitate. Some of the key modeling that happens in our classrooms may include sharpening pencils, walking in line, or following a quiet signal. Before modeling the teacher will ask for ideas about what the behavior may look like. Then the teacher or student would model the goal behavior. Next, the teacher asks the children what they noticed about the action. Then the teacher asks for another student or additional students to demonstrate the behavior. Again asking for what the children noticed. The final step is that all students practice the behavior. Children see and hear all. That’s why we need to be aware of tone of voice, body language, facial expressions and word choice when interacting with children at home and at school. Hopes and Dreams…We all have them for ourselves and for our children. How many times are parents invited to share their dreams with their child’s teacher? My answer is not often enough. Consider starting the year off with a 15-minute get to know each other conference. Parents can share what is important to them; classroom strategies that may have worked in previous years, and what they want their son or daughter to achieve that year. Teachers are then communicating what is key to success in that grade level, classroom procedures, and creating a shared vision for high expectations. The goal is to invest the time at the onset of the year to create and build a strong parent partnership that will pay dividends for the rest of the year. A phone call from the teacher or school will often trigger parents to think that something negative happened at school. Proactive communication is a tool to continue to strengthen and build parent partnerships. Electronic communication or handwritten sharing of celebrations, milestones, and even a “Glow & a Grow”, help parents feel included and important in their child’s classroom environment. Remember to keep parents informed, set and reinforce mutual goals and provide open lines of communication. We are investing so much time and energy into our classroom environment to create an optimal learning community, don’t forget that parents are an important factor in strengthening and maintaining our relationships with children.

Editorial on Negotiations and Meet & Confer Explaining the Relationship Between the Two

In what ways does the framework of negotiations/ meet & confer interface with student performance and district vision/purpose? What can be negotiated: Base Wage The base wage calculation is the total amount of money spent on salaries not including masters or additional credits and negotiates where we place the money from the CPI negotiation WERC-Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission The Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission provides an array of services that promote and facilitate peaceful resolution of disputes in the public and private employment sectors of the State. In addition to reviewing appeals of State Civil Service personnel actions, we travel throughout Wisconsin to conduct hearings and issue labor relations decisions, issue grievance awards in contract administration disputes, mediate contract negotiations and grievance disputes, and provide labor management cooperation training and facilitation. We provide labor and management with lists of qualified ad hoc neutrals who are not employed by the agency for a variety of statutory and contractual dispute resolution procedures. Certain local governmental units have also identified WERC staff attorneys to serve as impartial hearing officers for the unit’s grievance procedure or civil service system. CPI- Consumer Price Index--(currently 2.07%) Is how much we can go over the total base... (total amount that can be distributed over the far left cells) Once all of this is calculated the negotiations stops. Any further discussions on wages and cell increases beyond the base moves to a Meet and Confer. Meet and confer has been referenced to "The Wild West" where many methods of discussion are often utilized. Meet and Confer topics include health care,stipends for national board certification, and a whole host of other topics that are found in most employee handbooks. The conundrum begins with the age old question of what is supremely important that we need to stand our ground on and what topics can we have open to discussion. An open/growth mindset will help both parties maintain an air of fairness. The interface of student performance is closely linked to both negotiations and meet&confer. Remember the adage "Happy wife means Happy life"? Well the same can be said with happy teachers. We need to value and show appreciation for the hard work that teachers provide. Stick with me on this one... The core leadership component of Action involves finding ways to connect with your most valuable resource—your staff and empower them to act. “People don’t take action when they are told to. People take action when they are compelled to.” (Bradberry, 2012, p. 59 ) We need teachers to take action to engage our students and thus increase performance. By having one foot in both worlds, I do see both sides of the negotiation table. School Boards are trying to balance so many aspects of operations and may lose sight of educating the whole child. The teacher, who sees the bright faces everyday, knows how important his/her job is. The teachers are fighting for what they need to feel valued in a tough job that is expected to increase student performance.

Overview of Educator Effectiveness in WI --Group project

A Blabberize version of WI State Statute 118 General School Operations

Principal Job Description

Key components of a principal job description:
Tina Miller

Environment
The successful candidate must have background in building professional learning communities;
The ability to build strong relationships with staff, students, parents and the community;
Facilitation of data analysis and retreats;
Must be flexible, excel in relationship building and an ability to work collaboratively with others;
The successful candidate will demonstrate ability and success in: Educational leadership that promotes an atmosphere of mutual trust and respect throughout the district including continuous improvement, response to intervention, and professional collaboration;
Fostering appropriate relationships among school personnel, students, parents, and community;
Modeling strong personal and professional ethics.


Practices
Effective integration of technology to improve teaching and learning through instructional practice;
Have high professional and ethical standards;
Ability to focus teacher and school efforts on best practices toward increasing student achievement is vital, as well as a demonstrated understanding of curriculum and the ability to lead continual improvement initiatives at the building level.



Skills
The successful candidate for this position must have effective interpersonal, communication, facilitation, and community-building skills. Strong instructional leadership skills in addition to effective motivation and team building skills;
Extensive knowledge in curriculum, evaluation, assessment, RtI, PBIS and Common Core Standards;
Collaboration with colleagues on Educator Effectiveness Evaluation

Tina Miller Job Description

Tina Miller Job description:

My role is comprised of:
.25 Renaissance Learning District Coordinator
.25 Academic Coordinator with our 21st Century CLC
.50 Charter School Grant Coordinator


Renaissance Learning Coordinator
Communicate decisions to all elementary staff according to product usage in the district.
Conduct training to familiarize staff with best practices associated with math and reading products.
Coach personnel including building principals to incorporate product usage that supports district and building goals.
Collect and disperse data summations after data collection windows.


Academic Coordinator

The Principal and day staff meet monthly with the after school staff for the Club Mead Advisory Team meetings.  These 60-90 minute meetings are facilitated each month by the Parent Partnership Coordinator and Academic Coordinator.  

Weekly meetings with the AmeriCorp Members target student needs and goals that are part of our contract with the Marshfield Clinic.  The weekly meetings include AmeriCorp Members, Academic Coordinator, Boys and Girls Club Director, Parent Partnership Coordinator, Literacy Coordinator/Reading Specialist, and Principal. 

Our Academic Coordinator is a district-funded position that coordinates academic assessments and programming with the day school and after school.  She also provides and coordinates professional development for both day and after school staff.

Data on progress toward the goals is shared with both day and after school staff via the Academic Coordinator.  After school staff assist with the analysis and reporting of data.  They use this data to design Game Zone activities to build academic skills.

Charter School Grant Coordinator:
We will release a teacher half time (.5 FTE) to be assigned as a Charter Dissemination Grant Coordinator.  Her role is to assist in determining the training needs for our school, other mentor schools, and WISN schools.  The coordinator will arrange professional development opportunities through visits, mentoring, collaboration, and Polycom sessions.  Charter goals, budget dispersals, and coordination of DPI expectations comprise the Charter School Grant Coordinator position.