Our middle school already has a late start. Instructional time officially begins at 8:40am and ends at 3:35pm. Though there is some research supporting late starts for middle school, the main reason we start late is student transportation logistics. Many of our students take the school bus to and from our campus every day. Transportation is staggered based on school start and end times to be more efficient and cost effective. With state budget cuts around the corner, our school district has to find more creative ways to operate on a shrinking budget.
At our staff meeting this past Tuesday (April 1st), we were notified that our schedule next year will be modified to start at 9:15am and end at 4:10pm. I really thought this was a joke and shouted out, “April Fools!” My VP replied, “I wish this was April Fools.” Apparently, the district is planning to stagger bus schedules to schools with three different start times. This would allow a bus to make three routes each day instead of two.
In tough times, school districts are forced to make these decisions even knowing the negative impact it will have on students. Many students were immediately apposed to the proposed schedule change and I’m sure parents will be very upset when the word gets around. Students readily pointed out that after-school activities such as sports will be affected, parents providing transportation will be impacted, and fatigue will affect focus during the last period of the day. For students who take the bus, afternoon rush-hour traffic will lengthen their commute while reducing homework time and tutoring opportunities.
Though many teachers I work with received a “pink slip” layoff notice, I received the other letter. After clarification with my principal and a phone conference with Human Resources, I learned that this was not a standard letter.
Reassignment Notification from San Diego Unified School District
March 19, 2008
Dear Sean Gardinier:
ASSIGNMENT SY 2008-2009
As you are aware, on Tuesday, March 11, 2008, the Board of Education approved a resolution to reduce certificated positions in the district. As a result of this action, it will be necessary to terminate the employment of some teachers. The District has reviewed each effected certificated employee’s contract status, certification and district seniority date to determine who may receive layoff notices. Even though you are not one of the certified employees to receive a layoff notice, you may be affected by this action.
If the layoff occurs, based on your seniority date, employment status, teaching credential, and current assignment; you may be reassigned to a teaching position in an area of employment need for which you are credentialed. Until such time that you receive notice from Human Resources of another teaching assignment for the 2008-2009 school year, you will be transferred to the Human Resources Department Cost Center when the current school year ends. If you are currently assigned to a year-round schedule, you will remain in your current position to complete the student instructional year (through July 21, 2008).
Please be assured that we are closely monitoring all certificated assignments, separations and retirements in the hope that reassignments will not have to happen. If teacher layoffs occur and reassignments are necessary, you will receive official written notification from Human Resources directly. Pleas ensure that your contact information in PeopleSoft is current so you can be contacted in an expeditious manner.
Sincerely,
Samuel Wong
Chief Human Resources Officer
Human Resource Division
cc: Principal – Correia Junior High
It should be most noted that the school district does not utilize criteria of any merit to determine your eligibility for employment or assignment. In fact, being No Child Left Behind compliant in any area is not even considered, nor being Teacher of the Year at our school site last year or the San Diego County Science and Engineering Fair Teacher of the Year. Your performance and success as a teacher means nothing to job security in this school system.
During the phone conference with my principal and HR, the HR guy explained that I would have received a pink slip since I have a multiple subject credential but was exempted for my authorizations in science. Since science and math are areas of need, I am in the next tier of affected teachers. Ironically, they will be pulling me from a math/science position (an area of need) to fill another position in an area of need.
My principal is just as frustrated, pointing out to the HR guy that she has spent time and resources training her teachers and does not want to lose anyone. HR said that principals may be able to place teachers as long as the position fits their credentialed area. For me, that would mean a science position. Though I am NCLB compliant in several areas with my interdisciplinary background centered on science and math, my multiple subject credential closes the doors rather than opening up options (as intended when I choose a multiple subject focus rather than a single subject secondary credential).
The outlook for me returning to my school and holding my position looks good though my principal will need to pull the right strings to make it happen. Worse case scenario, I move schools. Starting over at another school would be detrimental! I have invested so much at Correia Middle School that leaving will be like starting at square one again. Teaching isn’t entirely transferable. It takes an entire year to familiarize yourself with the school, faculty, procedures, and resources. It takes a couple years to build collaborative professional relationships, collect instructional resources specific to curriculum, learn and involve yourself in the school community, and to gain a cultural understanding of the student community. It takes many years to be recognized as a contributing community member and a respected youth leader. Solid teachers provide a school with stability, consistent program development, and a community reputation.
The principal of our 7-8th grade public middle school came to my room to hang out (I suppose you could call it an informal observation but I’ve ditched this perception long ago) during a lesson and mentioned that she’s been working on next year’s budget. The district has been updating principals with projected budgets for next year given the state of California’s budget proposal. My principal says that our school’s operational budget will be short $500,000 next year.
This is like asking a skinny kid to go on a diet! We’ve been told that the district will be issuing “pink slips” to employees less than 5 years in the district (this will include the majority of teachers at our school). Our school will have to operate with only the essentials (a few teachers and electricity!). At stake is our librarian (a true hero at our school when it comes to resources), nurse (she fixes more than banged up knees), security, other support staff, and of course, teachers.
My principal tells me that the average teacher costs about $80,000 and is one of the major ticket items in the budget. That’s what we teachers cost but don’t think we actually make that much!!! I often forget the extra items employers pay for its employees and this includes our generous benefits package (a big perk for teachers).
Surprisingly, the district will eliminate teachers based on seniority. Certainly bad business sense but that’s what public k-12 education is all about! Older teachers cost more – they’ve climbed the salary ladder and with larger families, their benefits packages are more expensive. Getting rid of the less tenured teachers increases the average cost for teachers. In the business world, you’d downsize in all areas and try to keep your best and cheapest efficient people.
It will be interesting to see how it all turns out in the fall. Teachers will quickly be able to translate the impact in the classroom. We have a site improvement plan awaiting implementation for next year. As always, we are expected to do more with our students with less support.
During our advisory class the other day, I wrote an email with my class to Governor Schwarzenegger to express my disapproval of his state budget proposal. Click HERE to write an email of your own. We received an email back:
Thank you for writing to me about funding for California’s K-12 schools. I appreciate hearing from constituents like you who care about the education of our children.
California is blessed with one of the world’s most dynamic and diverse economies, but when it comes to the state budget process, we are highly dysfunctional. The combination of an economic slowdown and autopilot state spending formulas has created the budget shortfall we face today. Based on the budget I released in January, the deficit could grow to an estimated $14.5 billion by July 2009 – if we fail to act.
We must find a better way to connect spending to revenues, just like every family and business in the state must do. If less money comes in, we must also spend less. But right now, that is not happening. Although we project modest revenue growth during the next year – despite a weakened housing market and the subprime mortgage crisis – automatic formulas would increase spending by 7.3-percent, which is $7.6 billion.
That is simply unsustainable. Since I took office in 2003, I have tried twice to impose permanent stability, predictability and discipline on the budget process, but my efforts did not succeed. Permanent spending obligations have left California’s finances fundamentally out of balance and sealed the fate of future budgets. To combat this crisis, I have proposed 10-percent reductions in nearly every General Fund program from their projected 2008-09 funding levels. I took an across-the-board approach to make these difficult decisions as fair as possible.
My proposed budget for 2008-09 suspends Proposition 98, eliminates the anticipated $3 billion increase and reduces funding by $1 billion from current levels. Even during this difficult time, K-12 schools will still receive $68.5 billion in total funding and $11,626 in per-pupil spending next year. In addition, I am proposing that school districts be granted greater flexibility to use the funds they receive from Sacramento to meet their specific needs. This added local control is especially important during these difficult budget times.
Our budget problems should not stop our efforts to improve our schools. We have identified several districts that have persistently failed to educate children, and California will be the first state to use its powers given to us under the No Child Left Behind Act to turn these districts around. We will be working with Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell, teachers, administrators, parents and other elected officials to make these districts models of reform. We must act on behalf of the children now – we can’t wait any longer.
I know that talking about fiscal responsibility sounds cold when you have a representative for children or the elderly or disabled sitting across from you. It’s one of the worst things about being Governor. But what I find most troubling is the way we treat those who need our help the most. Their funding is like a roller coaster ride, and they never know how much they’ll receive from one year to the next. The current system leaves us with no choice, but we do have a choice in the future.
That’s why I have proposed a Budget Stabilization Act to fix the budget mess. Under my reforms, Sacramento wouldn’t be able to spend all the money in good years. Instead, we would set a portion aside to stabilize the budget in down years. If a deficit develops during the year, my plan would automatically trigger lower funding levels already agreed upon by the Legislature so we don’t have to scramble to close billion-dollar gaps. Had this system been in place the past decade, we would not be facing a $14.5 billion deficit, and we wouldn’t be making these difficult decisions about where to cut.
I am committed to working with the Legislature and the people of our state to pass the best budget we can – and turn today’s temporary problem into a permanent victory for all Californians.
A common reason why teachers do not participate in digital communication or technology development is because, “It is just another thing”. Let me explain their reasoning. Most don’t realize the day-in-the-life of a public school teacher. There are simply not enough hours in the day to plan lessons, teach, and manage your classroom and students. The plate is simply “full”. The structural trend is such that teachers are expected to increasingly do more while being supported less.
Asking teachers to do more is the norm. Teachers are presented and sometimes mandated to do new things all the time. It is not surprising then when innovation steps in front of them, their immediate response sounds like, “Is this just another thing I have to do?”
Encouraging teachers to bring their classrooms to the 21st century will take more than just adding technology to the teaching plate. The approach must be just as innovative as we expect them to be. I really don’t have an answer yet, only the destination in mind.
In January, I will be teaching Cell Cycle and Genetics to my 7th graders. I’m currently looking for new approaches to this challenging curriculum. Built on investigation and experimentation, students should be able to demonstrate knowledge and application of: cell cycle, mitosis, chromosomes, heredity (punnett squares), genotype probability, meiosis, DNA, nucleotides, changes in genes, and genetic implications and applications.
In the past several years, I have been asking prominent scientists how they think children should learn science. Here’s a list of their suggestions:
Students need to know where the science came from. They need to understand that science came from discovery, research, and innovation. This critical historical connection is often not taught
Set aside the textbooks, they are great for reference. Have students look at current research papers. Hold discussions in small groups.
Focus on the fundamental concepts. Difficult science does not necessarily need to be difficult to learn.
Provide opportunities for students to experience science. Kids learn when they are exploring. Every scientist has a sense of play and exploration. This should be encouraged in the classroom.
Avoid “fake” investigations. Students learn best when they have opportunities to explore their interests.
I agree with them with the addition of combining a technology piece that requires students to create electronic content. If you had to teach the above, how would you do it?
CorreiaTeachers.com was created after discussions with many teachers over the 2006-2007 school year. I hope the site will be a practical solution to increasing school communication, reduce meetings, and facilitate stronger collaboration while bringing the teaching staff to the 21st century of communication technology.
CorreiaTeachers.com was registered on June 7, 2007 and pointed to my server (though we could potentially move the database at anytime). The software, phpBB3 RC1, was installed on June 9th. phpBB is open source topic forum software that is completely customizable to meet the needs as our community grows.
RC7 (release candidate) is phpBB3’s latest version and though I have upgraded a few times since June, I’ve been waiting for the official stable release to come out.
The greatest challenge in setting up an Online Teacher Community is not technical. In fact, that’s the easiest part. The greatest challenge lies in encouraging teachers to utilize it. Though prior to its development, my discussions with teacher’s showed great enthusiasm for the potential. Even at its release, after a few days of development, teachers and administrators alike were excited about the potential.
For those of you who are teachers or work at a school, you know that it takes more than throwing the world online to encourage teachers and administrators to give the new tool a whirl.
After the first professional development giving the teachers a tutorial of phpBB3, I repeatedly heard, “It’s just one more thing I have to check.” As our administrators and teacher leaders increasingly use the site for communication, I still hear it.
It is not that teachers are resistant to change, they deal with change every minute throughout the school year, I think teachers know technology has a learning curve and they know it takes time. Time is short for teachers whose plate is always overflowing. Unfortunately, the daily stress and overwhelming responsibility that comes with teaching often shades the light of opportunity.
Leadership is necessary in this environment and my administration has recently taken an active role. Actually, I’m proud of them! I know some school administrations are reluctant to require their staff uses email.
I asked my 7th grade students in our academic forum, “How does CorreiaSeminar.com support your learning and experience at school?”
At this point, my students having been using the site for about 1 month. Though the front end is Joomla, they have been mostly interacting in the phpBB Topic Forum component. Here are some of the responses I received:
Yes. It most definietly helps my learning. To be able to have an educational discussion with students outside of the classroom at anytime is very helpful. If I have a question after hours, I can ask it online and get a response quickly. You can have a debate or discussion online, and everyone can add in their imput. It’s not like a face to face discussion, an email or a phone call because everyone is invited to be part of the learning experience.
The website in general has provided our classes with many wonderful resources. First of all, the online topic forum has allowed all of us to post questions, answer others, pool our ideas together, and basically share our ideas about any topic imaginable. (and by reading someone else’s ideas, it adds to our percpective on the concept.) Also- gives us one place to share links, pic, info and sources.
I think correiaseminar and the topic forums is an asset to our online community because it is very helpful to students. They use it to turn in assignments, post their warm-ups or journal entries, and ask questions. They also use it to gain information on school functions and vacations. Students can get missed homework assignments if they were absent or just chat with their friends. It also has announcements about school comings and goings, and has the dates of many important events, such as picture day. So all in all, I believe that correiaseminar and the topic forums are good for our online community.
The online community we have established is helpful because it helps us stay connnected and assist students who are having difficulties with the day’s lesson/homework. I’ve also learned some fascinating things through the different forum discussions that have been created, most of which I wouldn’t have learned otherwise. Overall, I feel its an awesome program to have access to, with the option to just talk to classmates about random subjects and an alternative way to do classwork (online journal entries). On a side note, its a great way to save paper!
Yes, I definitely think that the topic forums improve our school communities because then we can easily discuss things as a class without the problems of doing it out loud- such as talking over others, yelling, and more. Also, if we are absent one day, and there was a discussion, then we could just add our opinion after school and read what others had to say, instead of just missing out completely. In addition, we don’t have to use paper all of the time for journal entries.
Correia Seminar helps us because if someone forgot their homework than they could look on Correia Seminart and check their homework. This website also gives students that are in the Seminar Classes the opportunity to ask other students or the teacher for some help. Correia Seminar is a fun place to interact with others and a easier way to learn.
Correiaseminar helps us by allowing us to express ourselves in where you learn about school topics but you also learn more about people themselves in the open discussion forum. This has helped our learning experience by posting our homework online and the teacher can talk to students outside of school while they’re on the forum. This website is awesome!
Online topic forums help us to learn about not only the topic that we are studying, but about the opinions of our peers. by being able to communicate and interact with other students online, we are expanding our minds and bringing a tool familiar to many people of our generation, the computer, into education. This makes learning more interesting, as well as making it easier to learn, and being able to feed off of and comment on the opinions and thoughts of others.
I think the online community is good for the classroom and the students because we can talk to everyone from different periods, and ask any questions if a teacher isnt avaliable. We can read other classmate’s responses, and get different ideas.
I think correia seminar helps our school experience because it is easier to do things tha have to do with school and it is fun. And it is cool to see what other people say about what we say on assignments. Also we can respond to each other to see why we gave our respnd and we can have quick disscussionj and it is pretty cool about correia seminar. And it is just coll to do our work on a computer and online with others.
I like this site because it helps us share our thoughts and ideas, and connect with everybody. Plus, technology is becoming very prominent in society, and it’s important that we learn how to use it. Blogs, search engines, topic forums… they’re becoming really common (and easy to use) so utilizing these tools is practically a requirement.
I believe that the website supports our learning experience because of the way the forums work. They allow students to respond to your questions so that you can see what we think, while at the same time, other students in our class can read each other’s responses and get ideas for thier own. Even when sudents are at home, not together, they can still post questions to each other or look up the homework. I think it is a powerful tool that can aid our class.
I have talked to several people who have been interested in how I have been using forums in the classroom. Teachers and such often ask, “How can I get that!?” As soon as I tell them to get their own server, learn some web basics, and install the thing, they quickly think it must be a technical nightmare.
Actually, with some basic net know-how, there is plenty of support and expertise for phpBB. Actually, I’ve never experienced a more positive and helpful community.
phpBB’s Support Community runs on phpBB, of course, and is a great way to see how the structure of a topic forum community works. Much of the discussion right now is about the new version bugs and development. There are discussions going on between web developers, code junkies, MOD writers, administrators, and users about anything and everything related to phpBB. phpBB is in fact a product of the community.
I think the Support Community is an interesting place to see and watch. It has changed quite a bit over the years with varying degrees of traffic depending on needs and development stages. Actually, it would be a good case study to see how ideas develop and are implemented in an open source environment. Dissertation anyone?
My former website has recently joined the discarded static html virtual dump. Though my trash can be someone else’s treasure, I kicked my old teaching resource to the curb. Having students access the web for content is a thing of the past. It simply is not “cool” anymore. Want to know what’s cool? Ask a group of teenagers. Never ask just one teenager or a number of teenagers individually – you’ll only hear what they think you want to hear. Ask a group of teenagers what they like to do on the internet. Surrounded by peers, they’ll tell you what is in and what is cool on the internet.
Ignoring specifics, my students tell me they engage in four different activities: gaming, downloading media, messaging, and social networking. Static html pages just can’t compete with this!
After experiences with participating in online interest communities over the past many years, I wanted to give it a try in my classroom. 2 years ago, MrG-Online.com got a side-kick: phpBB. Introducing online forums to students is one of the coolest things that can happen to a classroom. phpBB is a world-class internet forum component that is open source and written in php. It was an easy transition for the MySpace users and a surprisingly fun way to interact as a class. Internet forums have been out for a very long time and are very popular with online interest groups. For two years, my static site, though highly utilized for class news, assignments, and document downloads, was becoming an entry point to our developing online academic community in the forums.
Rare things happened in the forums. Students wrote more, gathered after hours to discuss homework, and some students logged in after they left our middle school for high school to help other students and just to say hi!
Moving to a website, I knew a completely interactive site would have potential to do more of the other things teenagers like to do like social networking and sharing media (I squeeze gaming in there but for now, I link them to outside science and math games). phpBB would be the heart of our new community. It is the classroom and the lunch court.
My students range from 12-14 years in age with most being active online users. In my classroom portal, my students will post a link to their MySpace or the like. Now and then, I will moderate the links for appropriateness. I’m often shocked what some of my own students will post online. Aside from ill-chosen text, students post images and videos of themselves showing things their parents (and certainly their teacher) would not approve. I now make sure a lesson about being careful what you post is part of my curriculum. This year, it will happen towards the beginning of the year.
This lesson (what are your kids posting?) needs to be extended to parents as well. I asked my school if we could create a page on our school’s website where parents can go for resources on child internet safety. Hopefully that will be implemented sometime this year with my help. I hope the Ad Council produces more videos like the one below for teens, preteens, and parents.
Our middle school already has a late start. Instructional time officially begins at 8:40am and ends at 3:35pm. Though there is some research supporting late starts for middle school, the main reason we start late is student transportation logistics. Many of our students take the school bus to and from our campus every day. Transportation is staggered based on school start and end times to be more efficient and cost effective. With state budget cuts around the corner, our school district has to find more creative ways to operate on a shrinking budget.