The “Study Session” portion of our meeting on April 1 was dedicated to planning for school board member visits to all of our school buildings during.  These visits are generally the highlight of our year.  I don’t know if everyone shares that excitement.  Here is a passage from John Steinbeck’s The Pastures of Heaven, which took place in California in 1915:  

The day when the school board visited was looked forward to with terror by both the teacher and her pupils.  It was a day of tense ceremony.  Lessons were recited nervously and the misspelling of a word seemed a capital crime.  There was no day on which the children made more blunders, nor on which the teacher’s nerves were thinner worn.   

Speaking again for myself, the visits are exciting not only because we get to watch our talented teachers and enjoy the excited looks of learning on the kids’ faces, but because the visits are always organized around an interesting theme that will enrich our observations.  This year’s theme is:  Best Practices Snapshots:  Goals in Progress.  We will be seeing examples of research-based best practices and progress on reaching district, school, and department educational goals.             

The elementary school visits are organized around the math curriculum upgrade, writing curriculum development, and co-teaching.  At Central, we will observe co-teaching with a focus on differentiation in the context of the Literacy Design Team and the TERC math curriculum.  At Chatsworth, we are invited to witness collaboration between a 4^th grade special education and 4^th grade general education class on a LDT designed poetry lesson.  At MAS, we will have the opportunity to see how the TERC math program “spirals” through the grades and to observe a speech therapist and occupational therapist collaborate on using movement to stimulate pre-K children to use language.  At Murray, we will have a further opportunity to see the LDT’s work in action, including a visit to kindergarten and 4^th grade poetry lessons. 

At Hommocks, we will see how each department implements its educational goals with research-based technology.  For example, we will see how the social studies department implements its goal that “students will process new knowledge through higher-order thinking skills, and will apply what they have learned in a variety of creative ways through hands-on active learning activities involving multiple intelligences….” 

In our High School visits, we will be examining the School’s implementation of its goals.  We are invited to visit classes or meet with representatives of twelve different departments, and in each of these visits, we will be seeing how a different department is meeting its goal.  For example, we are invited to visit an AP American history class where they will be debriefing the research process, to visit the new math rooms to see how the rooms support student learning and encourage independence and effective inquiry, and to observe the teaching of critical learning skills in a self-contained US history class. 

We will be reporting on our visits at the May 6 study session.  I hope the report does not read something like this, also from The Pastures of Heaven:  Miss Morgan, with a strained smile on her face, welcomed the school board.  “We will do nothing out of the ordinary, gentlemen,” she said.  “I think it will be more interesting to you in your official capacities, to see the school as it operates every day.”  Very little later, she wished she hadn’t said that.  Never within her recollection, had she seen such …[poorly performing] children.  Those who did manage to force words past their frozen palates, made the most hideous mistakes.  Their spelling was abominable.  Their reading sounded like…gibbering….When the arithmetic had been muddled and travestied… [the school board president] rose from his seat.  “Thank you Miss Morgan, he said.” 

            I expect that our report will not read like that.  The “best practices” that we will be seeing include reinforcing efforts and providing recognition, learning by doing, cooperative and group learning, providing constructive feedback, and asking higher level questions.  But join us on May 6 to find out.   

Richard Marsico