We went to this school in Queens today to represent our school and help inform us with decisions around the overhaul of academies at Furness. After being there for a few hours (and I know a few hours is barely enough time to even begin understanding a school), I wanted to write down the things that make Hillcrest "work"...generally speaking:
(1.) Staff
- 98% of the teachers (thats 147 of the 150 in the building) were hand-picked by the principal and/or a member of his leadership team. It shows.
- A lot of time, resources, and money is spent to develop the staff. They have a rubric based on the Danielson Framework so there's a consistency of what "good teaching" looks like, and administration is in classrooms a lot. No one works in isolation.
- There's a leadership role, it seems, for the majority of the staff - nearly everyone has their niche. Teachers feel like they are part of the success of the school.
*So they get who they want, empower them so they don't leave, and then train/develop their staff (who again, stay).
(2.) PLCs
- I don't think it was PACs goal for us to see this, but what Hillcrest showed us is that it doesn't matter what the hell your academies are - what matters is how they're set up and the support you give them. Each of the nine learning communities had their own guidance counsellor, their own section of the building, hours each week for teachers to collaborate and discuss students & trends, their own AP...essentially each learning community was its own school. Both staff and students felt like they were part of a team and the word "family" came up A LOT.
(3.) Common Planning Time
- Different schedules each week - but within every "two week block", teachers have alloted time to meet departmentally, by academy, and with guidance counsellors to discuss PD, Danielson, assessment, trends, and students.
This isn't a list of things that we should try to implement - many we have no control over - but its traits we saw first-hand at a very large school and should always keep in mind. But maybe the question worth discussing is what's something we can begin working on short-term and long-term from this visit that would have a positive impact on our school community?
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ReplyDeleteAfter working closely with Philadelphia Academies since 2002, I can tell you that the model you describe is what they THINK has been happening in our schools for years.
ReplyDeleteAt meetings, they often say things like, "take this back to your academy team of teachers..." or "at your academy meetings..."
There has always been a huge disconnect between the "model" and the "reality". Hopefully with more automony Furness can more closer to this model.
The benifits of Small Learning Communities is nothing new in education, but to do it correctly is something that requires flexibility and resources that we just never had.
If we focus on building the structure one step at a time, hopefully we can get there.
I sometimes question the implementation of academies at small high schools such as Furness. Look at our present structure... do we really expect that our students are either going to be working in the HRTT or education industries? Of course not. Is there a better a better alternative where we aren't awkwardly typecasting our students as one thing or the other?
DeleteI think academies worked at Hillcrest because of its size. There, in a student body of 3200, a student has the option of choosing from nine distinct academies. Here and in other small schools, there just isn't enough faculty to offer that level of variation.
I'm going to keep an open mind as we enjoy our two day PAI workshop at the Convention Center.