September 22, 2015
My name is Dr. Nancy Chamberlain, and none of the changes
being proposed will affect my two students. My concerns have always been for
doing the right thing for all the kids of this district.
I have many questions about the philosophy that the Middle
School Task Force is considering, so many concerns that I cannot possibly
address them all in a single 3 minute window, so I will return to present one at
every school board meeting from now until the Task Force presents its
recommendations for your consideration.
The context for my questions relate to the philosophy
elucidated in This We Believe, of changing to heterogeneous classrooms
in which the current Challenge curriculum is used for all students in general
ed (not those in separate AAP and Spec Ed classes.), with concurrent
elimination of the self-select Challenge program.
In the April 20 minutes of the MSTF, Gretchen Schaefer noted some
of the complexities of “Challenge for All”:
• “Given the developmental
diversity present in every middle grades classroom, gearing curriculum to each
student’s level of understanding is a complex task.”
• “Both content and methods must be diversified and individualized.
• “Both content and methods must be diversified and individualized.
If we are going to switch to heterogeneous classes, which may
contain students of 3 to 5 very different ability groups, what does that look
like? Different assignments for each
group? Different grading rubrics for each group?
The National Middle School Association(1) recommends teachers
should:
·
Use a variety of developmentally
appropriate instructional practices to enable each student to experience a high
degree of personal excellence.
Susan
Winebrenner(2), renowned expert at Differentiated Instruction says teachers
should:
·
create assessments “pre-tests” for students to choose
to take to demonstrate mastery;
·
compact the curriculum (she lists 10 steps!);
·
create extension activities for each subject area, for
each month or unit;
·
use “extension menus” (which means creating more than
one option for each unit);
·
interview parents and students to find the area of
student’s passionate interest;
·
allow students to explore those areas in the classroom
when they finish their compacted work ahead of others.
This means the teacher will need
to re-create the extension activities annually based of their students’
interests.
SO MY
CONCERN TODAY IS TEACHER WORKLOAD:
Jr High teachers currently have ONE 50 minute planning
period, and FIVE 50 minute classes per day.
If the class size is 25, that is only 2 minutes of contact-time and only 24 seconds of planning time per
student per day!
As a former teacher, I'm concerned about the workload issue
of preparing for multiple levels of need in every course every day.
How can we
expect teachers to plan and implement authentic differentiated instruction?
1.
“ Meeting the Needs of High Ability and High Potential Learners in the
Middle Grades”
A Joint Position Statement of The National
Middle School Association and The National Association for Gifted Children
2. Susan
Winebrenner: Teaching Strategies for Open Enrollment Classes and Compacting
and Differentiation are Easy!
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