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

Implementing Schoolwide Projects - May 1994

Key Features of Successful Schoolwide Projects

Professional Development

As schools adopt schoolwide Chapter 1 models, decision makers create new roles for program participants, and professional development becomes central to helping changes occur smoothly. This sometimes means that teachers and administrators return to school for specialized courses in administration and management, curriculum planning, or diagnosis and assessment. In schools with language-minority students, teachers and leaders take courses or degrees in bilingual education or English as a Second Language. In districts that most actively promote schoolwide projects, interested educators and parents also participate in workshops, seminars, and long-distance learning, and frequently contribute to curriculum planning and decision making.

Staff development is closely aligned with schoolwide project goals and takes various forms: schoolwide retreats with the entire faculty, with planning communities, or with faculty and/or parent subgroups; continuing informal discussions among colleagues and across teams, often including parents; routine team planning or curriculum development meetings; participation in continuing re- education to learn Reading Recovery, Success for All, or other research-based teaching models; or stipend support so that teachers or administrators can return to school or travel to training opportunities in other communities.

Teachers frame the long- and short-term staff development designs of many schoolwide projects, and they seek out and contribute ideas that match their school's priorities. In many schools, a staff development committee routinely elicits suggestions for professional development topics, programs, or expertise that would benefit the overall project. District Chapter 1 personnel, curriculum consultants, and principals are alert to new resources that would benefit the school, or they send teams of teachers to examine concepts or program options that others have tried. Topics vary and the emphasis changes yearly according to shifts in student populations or programs. Common approaches include developing schools according to effective schools correlates; using new interventions such as Reading Recovery, whole language, or cooperative learning; or using science discovery or manipulative-based mathematics models.

Many schoolwide projects encourage teachers to visit colleagues' classes and discuss curriculum issues across grades and with team members. They use Chapter 1 funds to hire substitutes so that regular teachers can participate in or lead staff development workshops, engage in curriculum development, or observe other classrooms or schools to learn new methods and see new strategies in action.

Some schoolwide projects have formed effective, collaborative professional development arrangements with district-based or regional technical assistance centers and partnerships with universities, business organizations, and vendors of research-based programs or curriculum materials. "We linked with two colleges, with [courses]...taught right here at McNair," said the principal of an elementary school in North Charleston, South Carolina. "Teachers got graduate credit to [attend]; Chapter 1 paid for the course. Ten practicum students came into the school...providing more intensified assistance to students." In Louisville, Kentucky, the district's Gheens Professional Development Academy has created partnerships with several staff development groups in the area, enabling schoolwide projects to coordinate their professional advancement needs with Gheens' resources. Among the most popular programs are those that enrich the basic academics, help teachers develop thematic curriculum units, promote site-based decision making, and improve teachers' knowledge of alternative and performance-based assessment. Reading Recovery teachers from one Louisville school also received continuing training through a year-long course that the University of Louisville instituted at the school's request.

Teachers and principals in schoolwide projects have considerable leverage in selecting staff development options and tailoring them to their schools' mission, or to teacher or parent education needs. The key is not program content so much as who decides the agenda and whether teachers have the chance to continue to teach as they develop professionally. It takes some juggling of schedules and a willingness by administrators to fund costs--university applications, courses, parking or registration fees, and day care arrangements--so that teachers or parents can meet after school or in evenings. But a willingness to make the necessary arrangements for teachers to continue developing professionally ensures that schoolwide projects are centers of learning for adults as well as for children.
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