N.Y.C. School Built Around Unorthodox Use of Time

[Patrina]

Really great article from Tuesday's Education Week on school models that support professional development and collaboration.

--Patrina

N.Y.C. School Built Around Unorthodox Use of Time

Tanya Odums, center left, meets with students to discuss what they learned from a recent school outing. The school has a wellness team in addition
to its instructional teams.
—Jessica Rinaldi for Education Week

By Stephen Sawchuk

New York

Superficially, the Brooklyn Generation School, here in the Flatbush area, looks a lot like the other six small public high schools that share space in this tall building, the former South Shore High School.

What’s noticeably different about it, though, is the strength of the relationships among staff members. Teachers can be seen running across the hallways to each other’s rooms. They tease each other
good-naturedly in staff
meetings. Most importantly, said Principal Terri Grey, the tenor
of staff conversations is markedly different.

“They aren’t about something egregious a student did,” Ms. Grey said. “Instead, it’s three teachers standing there, talking about how one of their kids really got the lesson today.”

Teachers here attribute the collegial atmosphere to the public school’s novel way of differentiating teachers’ roles and staggering their schedules. At Brooklyn Generation, teachers instruct
only three classes a day, get two hours of common planning with
colleagues each afternoon, and have a highly reduced student load—as few
as 14 students per class. Yet the restructured scheduling costs no more
to operate than a traditional schedules.

To read the rest of the article visit, http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/03/10/24brooklyn_ep.h29.html...

[Ryan Goble]

P - thanks for cross posting this!!

RRG:)