CUR1-Hess

**Introduction to C&I563 Classmates: ** **For Curatorial Project 1 you have the opportunity to collaborate on a proposal for a school reform project. With respect for the diverse backgrounds and interests of our class do not worry about having a unified proposal right away. Instead, read through the template and begin contributing to this wiki page as you wish. If we are able to work on contributions over the near future I will be glad to work on synthesizing the proposal we created. Or, just dabbling in the questions will hopefully guide your reflections on the stories of change as told by the players in //The Courage to Change// by Paul E. Heckman.**

Would you like to download the document? [[|PMHess CI563 Curatorial 1.doc]]

= Help Write Our Story for Successful School Reform = Congratulations! You are one important step away from being awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars to support your desire to successfully reform the school setting in which you work. Your successful professional work to date has positioned you to be eligible for this monetary award. Your final important step is to provide the granting agency with a prospectus of your plans. Your prospectus must be based on the story of Ochoa Elementary School of Tucson, Arizona, the Educational and Community Change Project (ECC) as described in Paul E. Heckman’s book (1996) //The Courage to Change: Stories from Successful School Reform//. You and your team will work collaboratively on this project through a wiki page over the next ten days. Once the proposal is finalized and reviewed it will be submitted made available to the funding agency for consideration.

As a reminder, the goals of the project were (p. 8):
As you prepare your prospective be careful to include not only the concrete figures of your plans but also your personal thoughts and reflections as you embark on this exciting journey!
 * 1) to improve dramatically the achievement of students in mathematics, science, social science, literature, the arts, reading and writing;
 * 2) to restructure schooling practices so that poor and minority students achieve well beyond elementary schools, and thus the dropout rate diminishes; and
 * 3) to develop assessment and evaluation practices that more accurately convey how much children have achieved in this alternative school project.

Section A: The Basics
>> > >
 * 1) Project timeframe, in years.
 * 2)  I would plan for 3-4 years. You need some time to collect and assess data, but not such a long timeframe that people become complacent. ~Michelle
 * 1) Acknowledgement of contractual agreements or bargaining units that may have to be consulted in conjunction with this proposal.
 * 2) Explicit and relevant issues related to the current school culture that may have an affect on the project outcome. ---Students need to be aware of the changes and have input into them. Specifically, they should understand what will be asked of them and that their current notions of "school" and "learning" may shift, and that they will be asked to take more responsibility for their learning (and lessen their urge to ask "will this be on the test" or "how many pages" kinds of questions). --Chris
 * 1) Explicit and relevant issues related to prior projects involving school personal and change.

Section B: The School Community
NOTE: //Avoid confusing Indigenous Invention for “Implementation of Innovation”. In Indigenous Invention, you will create and develop your own change vs. implementing the innovative ideas developed by others such as higher authorities and governmental agencies.// 2. With good reason, teachers have the right to be skeptical and wary of changes people seek them to make. How will you address participant skepticism?  I think that teachers are skeptical with reason. Far too often, too much time is spent on the planning stages, but not the implementation and support phases. By explicitly addressing how teachers can seek support, ask questions, and offer suggestions, we can eliminate some of the skepticism. We need to make sure our plan has a cyclical component that allows us to address issues of implementation and support in an ongoing basis. This would include an avenue for teacher support at the building level via administrators, with fellow teacher collaboration time, and district level support. ~ Tami Dean
 * 1) Describe how your proposed reformation will cause “Indigenous Invention” whereby you, “…create the school you and your community deem necessary” (p.123). You and your school community members will be involved in and the key to what will or will not be accomplished for your school. To be considered Indigenous Invention, your change must address:
 * Significant involvement of parents, community members and school personnel;
 * Participant inquiry, questioning what has not been questioned in the past;
 * Participant courage;
 * Participant emotion;
 * Participant empowerment;
 * Participant psychological ownership;
 * Participant commitment;
 * Participant motivation;
 * Participant risk.

Only with real motivation and engagement would such a shift sustain itself past the "honeymoon" phase (where everyone's excited to "try the new thing". This takes planning and perseverance, and continual reflection/adjustment as particular challenges come up. --Chris
 * Section C: Student Demographics **
 * 1) Describe your student population in terms of racial and ethnical groups, socioeconomic status, highest degree attained by parents and guardians, citizenship, dropout rates. What special considerations must your reformation proposal make given the population?
 * 2) Describe the language or languages spoken by your personnel, students, parents and guardians. What special considerations must your reform proposal make given the language or languages spoken?

Section D: Planning and Questioning
> > > >> > ** 
 * 1) How will you assess what teachers believe about students?
 * 2) Describe how you will structure the use of time and the school day to accommodate the need for team planning. Look into the ideas underlying "professional learning communities". Common planning periods and/or an early dismissal day per week are two options my school is currently looking into.
 * 3)   How will you group students in ways that achieve more than the standard age and grade-level groupings?
 * 4) Will you employ, if applicable, the strategy of looping (a teacher or teachers staying with a group of students for more than a year; see NCREL’s website at http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/methods/instrctn/in5lk10.htm for more information).
 * 5) Within teams working on progress toward reform, how will decision-making protocol be determined?
 * 6) How will teams determine what is to be taught? **<span style="COLOR: rgb(187,17,93)"><span style="COLOR: rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="COLOR: rgb(104,244,47)">Te   **    <span style="COLOR: rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="COLOR: rgb(255,0,0)"><span style="COLOR: rgb(255,6,0)">**<span style="COLOR: rgb(187,17,93)"><span style="COLOR: rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="COLOR: rgb(104,244,47)">ams will follow the recommendations in ED Hirsch's work about what students need to know at each grade level. CH   **
 * 1) How will authentic assessment be utilized? (//Remember, what is assessed must be prompted; what is promoted must be assessed, p. 135; and your school will have a waiver of standardized testing for the pilot year of your project.)//
 * 2) What will be the role of parents, guardians and community members in the classroom and outside of the classroom yet within the schools?
 * 3) How will the work of the school extend beyond the school walls into the community?
 * 4) How will you assess and capitalize the current knowledge of students?
 * 5) How will you ascertain and utilize the beliefs and desires of students?
 * 6) In what way will designated time for dialogue be utilized among participants?
 * 7) How will you identify and develop a common language of the reformation experience?
 * 8) How will you maintain an environment of “unconditional positive regard” (p. 35) despite the likely opportunity for conflict? More specifically, how will you help participants in conflict see that there are, “…differences, not bad people, just people who see things in different ways”? **<span style="COLOR: rgb(196,59,82)"><span style="COLOR: rgb(172,244,72)">Participants will participate in a conflict resolution workshop.  **
 * 1) How will you ensure your educational environment is rooted in caring vs. control? <span style="COLOR: rgb(204,26,244)">Move teachers and support them in using other instructional theories past behaviorism. Build school culture that fosters intrinsic motivation~ Tami Dean
 * 1) Describe how students will experience learning in context through inquiry, investigation and ties to relevant literature. <span style="COLOR: rgb(36,20,215)">Project based learning, interdiscinplinary (or team) teaching, the use of portfolios assessed by teams of instructors, administrators, and community members --
 * 2) <span style="COLOR: rgb(36,20,215)">    <span style="COLOR: #100f0f; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif">Describe how the expert/novice relationship will be utilized in and among the participants, teachers, parents, students, community members, outside of the traditional sense of teacher as expert and student as novice.  Teachers will let students take some innitiative in their learning, create more of a dialogue invironment rather than a banking system. Students will be active participants in their own learning, rather than passive recepiants of information. For example, a teacher might give students a topic for a project, and it would be up to students how to go about researching and presenting that topic. Alternatively, a teacher might set certain parameters for an assignment, and students could choose a topic from an assortment of topics. The main idea here is to give students partial control over their own school work, give them a sense of ownship and resposibility such that there is room to challenge oneself, as opposed to just follow the directions and getting by on bare minimum required for passing. - Iryna
 * 3)      Address how students will be encouraged to exercise self-discipline.
 * 4)  In what ways will all participants be afforded the opportunities to //wonder// and //wander//?
 * 5) <span style="COLOR: rgb(7,7,233)">  I may be taking this too literally, but I picture the establishment of a community garden or other outdoor learning center. Ecological education has a new slogan "no child left inside." Active engagement in an outdoor setting, especially an urban setting, can greatly enhance learning opportunities for all parties involved. A garden provides opportunities for parents and other community members to volunteer as well as a tangible product. ~Michelle
 * 1) In what ways will you leverage the use of technology?
 * 2) In what ways will portfolios be used at the program level? By teachers? By students? **<span style="COLOR: rgb(104,255,0)">District will contract with the Livetext Portfolio Company to ensure that assessment data is collected and can be accesses by programs, teachers and students for the purpose of informing future teaching.

Section E: Administrative Leadership
In what ways will your administrative leadership encourage and support your endeavors? Use the remainder of your narrative to describe and explain special considerations not addressed by the sections of this proposal. = //Best wishes on your journey to successful school reform!// =