A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

So, What Can I Do?

There are countless ways to get started. However you proceed, you'll want to let your principal, your school-site council, and others know about it. That way, your efforts can be connected to your school's overall effort.

But you don't have to wait for the finalized plan before you begin. Here are just a few ways you can get started now:

• Look over the questions in this booklet. Identify the 10 most important things your school and community must do to move all students toward high standards. List these 10 priorities and share them with your principal, department chair, school management committee, or others.

• Get copies of the state standards and other academic standards being developed in subjects you teach (see appendix 3). Study them. Compare them to the standards being used in your school. Let your principal, department chair, and others know how the standards in your school measure up. Share examples of the standards with them.

• Identify what you and other teachers are already doing that can help students reach the new or emerging standards in subjects you teach. Form a group of teachers for swapping best lessons and teaching ideas that can help students reach those standards.

• Join a network of teachers working to improve instruction in your subject area -- networks such as the regional networks for portfolio assessment in Vermont and the professional development networks organized around curriculum frameworks in California. If your state hasn't organized such networks, encourage your state board of education and other state-level decision-makers to do so.

• Create lessons and instructional units based on new or emerging standards. Team up with another teacher to develop interdisciplinary lessons. Ask your librarian about new materials that may serve as resources for helping students reach the standards.

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"Integrating academic and vocational learning" is the way things are done at the Health and Bioscience Academy in Oakland, California. When students learn hand-washing techniques in biology lab, they discover in English class why those techniques are important -- by learning about bacteria and an historic epidemic. In physiology, students select and research "teen health issues" and share the results in a newsletter, which they write for other students.

Building Bridges from School to Work,
U.S. Department of Education,
April 13, 1993

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• Display student work, and not just inside your school. "Students need audiences bigger than their teachers," says teacher Joe Miller, a theology and psychology teacher at Maryknoll High School in Honolulu. Football games, high school plays, and concerts often draw sizable audiences of parents and community members. "People like to see their kids perform," says Bob McCarthy of the Coalition of Essential Schools. "Now we have to make academic exhibitions into performances worth coming to look at." (Horace, Coalition of Essential Schools, May 1993)

• Find out if your school district has applied for state GOALS 2000 funding. If it has, find out how you can help. If it hasn't, encourage your superintendent and school board to apply.

• Contact the teachers who are serving on your state and local planning panels. Let them know that you're interested. Offer them your support and assistance.

• Ask your technology or media specialist about any new equipment that may have arrived in your school. Do you have access to a computer that's connected to the Internet? If not, is there a library, university, or another organization that might help you get access?

• Look for professional development opportunities from nearby universities, professional associations, teacher networks, and other organizations. Collaborate with a researcher at a nearby university.

• Find out about upcoming changes in your school's assessment program. Anticipate the changes. Begin using, or improve your use of, portfolios of student work by collaborating with other teachers who also rely on student portfolios.

• Reach out to parents. Look for ways to bring family members into your classroom; harness their knowledge and experiences as a resource for your students. And encourage parents to look not just at the report card, but at their children's actual work. Show parents portfolios of their child's work -- what one teacher calls "living report cards" -- and ask for their feedback. Send home activities and ways for families to enrich and extend what their children are learning in your classroom. Let parents know what they can do at home to help their children do well in your class. Studies suggest that more than 80 percent of parents want you to do this -- parents of children of all ages, including high school.

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In Tucson, teachers at Hollinger Elementary School visited 150 families in their Mexican-American community and "mapped" the knowledge and expertise of those families. Teachers then developed hands-on lessons based on families' expertise, which included farming, childcare, construction, auto repair, international commerce, and more. A 5th grade teacher, for instance, drew on the expertise of a parent to develop and teach a unit on clothing that included studying clothing ads, analyzing labels, learning about fashions and design through history, examining patterns of weaving, and experimenting with fabric durability. Another teacher used the candy-making and selling activities of a student's family as the basis for a unit that incorporated study of geography, nutrition, computation, graphing, and language arts. These and other units drew on families' strengths to move students toward district objectives across academic subjects.

An Idea Book: Implementing Schoolwide Projects,
U.S. Department of Education, 1994

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• Ask your principal and vocational-technical teachers about your school or community's plans to improve or build a full-blown school-to-work program. Figure out how you can help, perhaps by incorporating work-based learning into classroom instruction.

• Recruit new partners. Ask your principal about getting a volunteer or two to help out in your classroom. Look around your community. There may be senior citizens or volunteer organizations nearby just waiting to be asked to read and talk with children. Is there a professional association, university, or company that might provide guest speakers on a topic you teach? Is there a local historian, journalist, or other professional who can talk about his or her work and how it relates to what your students are now studying? Are there parents -- or students -- with expertise in technology that can help you learn to use a new CD ROM player that came in over the summer, or a computer that's just been hooked up to the Internet? Can your librarian show you any new materials, books, or software related to subjects you teach?

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[A Partner...] [Conclusion]