Teaching+and+Planning

Below, please find the items the SAG extracted from the Task Force Recommendations that pertain to scheduling. They are in blue. Please add any other scheduling considerations you have below them in black.


 * Find a way to incorporate service learning into the schedule.
 * Time must be structured to allow all teachers in grades 5-9 to be advisers.
 * Consider what time will be needed for advisory programs (both meeting with students and time to meet as advisers and plan)
 * Time needed for advisers to meet with psychologist
 * What role does a homeroom period play in Advisory?
 * Where more individualized instruction is necessary, we should put boys into groups small enough to deliver it.
 * Allocate time for meetings, observations, and evaluations as part of a new mentoring program for new faculty and staff with senior faculty and staff. (Weekly basis).
 * Allocate time for teachers to plan, collaborate and observe each other (who are not in the mentoring program).
 * Allocate time for teachers to share information gathered during professional development.
 * Faculty desire common time for planning collaborative units.
 * Faculty desire time to talk with colleagues and co-ordinate curriculum
 * Length of classes - teachers asked for more flexibility in class length, to allow for more in-depth learning when necessary, interdisciplinary units, and cooperative learning.
 * Availability of physical space and its impact on: nomadic teachers, teachers moving around contributes to lost teaching time, cross-divisional teachers.


 * Please be mindful of teacher's schedules and allow for breaks for planning, returning parent phone calls, grading papers, etc., during both the morning and afternoon.
 * Long class periods to accommodate many teachers - working on an important problem or issue or way of thinking with students - some of whom may show up one day, not another; others of whom may collaborate for part of the period focusing on a particular component of the problem (etc.). Along with this, a lot of planning time for all teachers who "teach" the problem (etc.).
 * Please do not create a schedule until it is clear (1) how we want to teach, (2) what we want to teach, (3) what will be the focus of our classes/courses. (How much do we wish to focus on understanding rather than content, with the understanding that understanding breads content.)
 * Time in the day for teacher groups (CFGs, for example) to meet.
 * Currently, I can schedule my study hall so I can leave early to coach when needed (Thursdays). This makes my life easier, and I do not want to lose it.
 * Use our 1/2 days for Service Learning. We have 4 of those a year. Not to add extra days or weekends to this schedule.
 * Spanish - for 3rd grade, or a grade in the middle school where half a group is taught, we can have a “game day”, with the entire class group, on Fridays, every week. This class could last for a bit longer time, and can also meet on or just before the last day of vacation.
 * 6th grade would have Spanish four times per week.