Saturday, April 12, 2008
Moving from Traditional Management Theory toward The School as a Moral Community
In Chapters 3,4, and 5 we discussed the process of moving away from a system of Traditional Management and toward creating the School as a Moral Community. For our discussion I would like to focus on the following aspects. Traditional management theory is best suited to situations in which the need exists to bring about a routine level of competence and performance. However, the usefulness of this theory ends when the goal is to bring about extraordinary commitment and performance. However, based on the School as a Moral Community we need to create communities of practice within which the individual practices of teachers are informally connected to each other in such a way that a single shared practice of teaching begins to emerge. What is the current practice at your respective school that provides evidence that you are moving toward creating the School as a Moral Community?
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In my school, we are moving toward a community of practice in our teaming efforts, especially in the math department. Our math teachers work collaboratively, conduct peer observations and reviews, meet weekly in grade level math meetings, share lesson plans and instructional strategies, and work together to conduct data analysis and remediation assessments. All of these activities have brought our teachers together into more of a community of practice.
Sarah Taylor
My school continuously works toward community involnement. We have career days set up for students to visit various fields to see how it works and learn anout the field as well as the education involved. We bring community leaders in for morning activities to stress the importance of education and the educational path taken for that chosen career. We also sponser a reading program for parents to join there child for an evening of reading at our school library to promote reading with children.
Change is always difficult and changing beliefs is even more difficult!
My school is located in a small community and everyone identifies with the school so there is a great deal of community involvement. It is nice to see.
My school is also moving toward a community of practice. Teachers meet weekly to work collaboratively on lesson plans, assessments, stratgies, etc. My school is currently accrediated with warning in math, and our teachers have all come together as a community to help all students become successful on the upcoming SOL's. Even though we are not all math teachers, we realize that it's "our" school and we are all working together to become accrediated!
At our school we have staff developments usually once or twice a month.
A teacher is assigned a specific teaching strategy to introduce to all
of the teachers. Teachers then go back and implement that strategy in
their classrooms and monitor its effectiveness. Some work well and some
do not, it is up to the teacher to decide if it is worth continuing to
use. In addition to the staff developments, teachers of the same
subject area also meet frequently to discuss what may be working in
their classes as well as other things to help each student best prepare
for the upcoming SOL's.
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Keith Davis
Our school is slowly moving towards a community of practice, faster in the
PE Dept. We invite parents to observe class and encourage feedback. We
just worked we parents in the community to purchase new soccer goals for
our PE Dept. We work well together sharing ideas and helping each other to
be the best we can. I would like to see the entire school move a little
faster to enjoy the advantages of everyone working together. To see the
community and school come together as one is very exciting and long
overdue.
Dan L. Strong
Our school is the
only thing in our community, therefore we really try to include the community in our
activities. When we had industry in our area we had a partnership where we visited
their workplace every year. We were not accredited until this year and we all worked
together to support our school.Even with the things we do I know there is still room
for improvement in this area.
NiCole Holmes
At my school we are continuing to try to get more involvement from the community as a whole. We do numerous things to make sure we are involving the community in school events such as assemblies and other school functions. Increased community involvement is a continuing process that takes time and effort.
Randy Poole
One of the ways we try to enhance communication with the community is through the use of our school website. We try hard to keep everything up to date and encourage parents to visit as often as possible. We have even started putting our students of the month on there as a means of student recognition.
Tamara Lasley
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