Every Student Deserves a Legacy 2007:
Real-life stories from the front lines of high school reform
As the third year of the small schools transformation begins, a whole new set of challenges faces the teachers on Brookhaven's literacy team, as well as the school overall. Budget cuts last year caused layoffs throughout the school district and seven staff positions at Brookhaven were eliminated.
The teaching concepts that the literacy team researched and shared with their peers the year before also go out the door with the departed teachers. While some teachers carry on using the dialectical journals and essential questions, there is simply not enough time to bring all of the new teachers up to speed.
As the year settles into routine, some of the new teachers join the literacy team, which is populated with several of the strongest proponents of school reform from all three small schools. It quickly becomes a place where members share the teaching struggles they face. Soon they begin to rediscover the sense of personal and professional camaraderie some felt they lost with the shakeup of their small school teams.
In January, the group brainstorms strategies to help students at all reading levels improve vocabulary, increase reading, think critically, organize their thoughts and -perhaps the most difficult challenge - work independently.
Howell is feeling the frustration of trying to accomplish that last goal: developing student's ability to think and act independently in the classroom.
"How do you get some of these kids, even some of these advanced kids, to just sit down and do it?" Howell asks her colleagues. "How do we build their confidence so that they can write?"
After several minutes of brainstorming, the teachers turn to a larger question: What one single thing can they do to encourage literacy in every classroom at Brookhaven?
Someone brings up the concept of Sustained Silent Reading (SSR), which is classroom time devoted to reading. Staff members have researched the approach and attended professional development sessions on it; the idea seems to hold promise. Teachers discuss how to implement it at Brookhaven: They could create a schedule where all core classes devote 20 minutes a week to SSR, with the reading time rotating from English one day to social studies the next, and so forth. Basically, every student would spend 20 minutes a day reading somewhere along the line.
"We could implement that for the next semester," says Hegyi. Howell agrees.
"It's not a monster for teachers. I like that," another offers.
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