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Featured Story
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| Steve
Miller facilitates strategic planning for Southeastern
Regional School District. |
"We have lots of plans - but they're all sitting on
the shelf. We need help making something happen!" This
was Bev Pusateri's message when she contacted Mass Networks
this past winter about working with Southeastern Regional
School District. Like many vocational schools, Southeastern
Tech needs to better integrate its academic and technical
programs in order prepare students for MCAS graduation requirements
as well as long-term occupational success.
The faculty works hard creating good classroom activity,
but they need to find ways to bring all the individual efforts
into a more coherent whole. Since their student body comes
from a large number of scattered districts, the school also
needs a way to build community, school spirit, and help students
focus on the importance of taking responsibility for high
quality work.
Mass Networks' involvement with SRSD is just beginning; but
because Principal Jerome Burke is so strongly supportive of
the effort, things have moved quickly. He felt that while
many people said they wanted change there would likely be
significant disagreements about the changes that ought to
be made.
In order to build a common vision and lay the groundwork
for action, the first step was to pull together a core group
of volunteers who were willing to take on the extra work of
whole school reform. Meeting weekly, the group brainstormed
the qualities that they would want SRSD graduates to exemplify
and the characteristics of the school programs that would
encourage and promote those goals. Some of these visionary
statements include:
- Engage students in project-based, applied learning
focused on meaningful tasks that embody high performance
standards for both academic and vocational work, which are
integrated into a unified curriculum.
- Create a school community so that all students
are connected to school life and at least one adult, and
so that the staff works together in a cooperative manner,
through the encouragement of mentoring, community service,
and extra-curricular activity.
- Foster individual initiative and responsibility
for personal, school, social, and occupational tasks in
ways that exhibit problem-solving and critical thinking
skills.
- Foster mutual respect and teamwork among students
and staff so that people are good leaders as well as followers
and the faculty models the kinds of relationships they want
students to practice.
- Foster a process of continuous improvement among
individuals and within the whole school so that people are
willing to honestly examine facts and supportively push
each other to do better.
- Make connections to larger world so that students
feel confident in stretching their aspirations to embrace
the region's rich and diverse cultural, educational, and
occupational opportunities.
As the core group talked they rapidly realized the need to
expand their membership to include additional groups within
the faculty. Using different mechanisms, the group went through
several expansions. Now 12 strong, they are moving to the
next stage.
They are picking a "portfolio" of projects that
begin to express the values they've articulated. Some of the
projects are easy and visible "low hanging fruit"
that can be done right away in their own classrooms or with
the help of one or two other people. Other projects require
a more elaborate planning process leading to school-wide action;
these, too, are beginning to be worked on.
As part of that effort, the core group is beginning to "go
public" and talk with others about their vision statements
and school reforms they've been working on. This coming summer,
a team from SERSD and Mass Networks will attend the "High
Schools That Work" training conference in order to bring
that program back for implementation next year.
The fun is just beginning.
To find out more about how strategic planning can help
your school district, contact Steve
Miller.
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