.4 Program, Staffing and Organizational Development

Now what would be the program of this school? First of all, there would be these experimental national curriculum elements. Take, for example, the program that we mention a lot of times in here: reading. There is a lot of controversy on how to teach reading, and there are some people who feel strongly for phonics, and other people who feel strongly about whole language instruction. The evidence is
that if you pay attention to reading, reading will improve, and for most kids it doesn't make a difference which method you choose. Right now we don't have a very good way of choosing. In our national experimental schools, we would develop new curricula concerning the environment, new curricula concerning global studies and concerning health and nutrition so we would have lots of different kinds of curriculum elements to be developed and supported.

We'd also have experimental staffing patterns. We would have things like differentiated staffing, opportunities for mentoring with part-time and volunteer roles, all part of experimental staffing. Remember we had a whole lecture in here about the teacher and his or her staff. My vision of teaching in the future is that the teacher is a senior honcho with a lot of folks helping. The idea that the teacher
is the bottom level of the food chain doesn't appeal to me at all because I see the teacher as a very senior person directing a variety of resources to maximize learning. Take for example this idea of part-time and volunteer roles. The typical school hates part-time people because it is messy to administer part-time people. Take for example the idea of a local artist or sculptor teaching a class in the high
school. I don't want that sculptor to have to teach full-time or not at all. I think it would be really cool for that person to come in and teach sculpturing to one or two classes a day and do the job. First of all that would be good financial support for the sculptor and it would also benefit the kids while allowing the sculptor time to do his own work, too. But right now if a sculptor wants to be a teacher,
he has to be a full-time teacher or nothing. That is not a good trade-off. I see this as one of the major experimental elements: helping teachers to learn how to work with a staff. I think we need to experiment with different kinds of teaching teams and different ways of people working together. I would even like teams across grade levels. We need teaching teams across grade levels, within disciplines, across disciplines and across schools.

We need some experimental organizational patterns as well. We need to figure out if the way schools are currently organized is the ideal way. For example, Lake Taylor is a school of about 1800 kids. Would it be better if we were to divide those 1800 kids into four houses so that the kids would have a reference group of about 500? One of the things we are doing organizationally at Lake Taylor is
we have developed instead are clusters. So we have groups of about one hundred kids that are sharing all of their classes together and all of the same teachers so that the teachers and kids get to know each other very well. We're trying to figure out a way for those kids to move from grade nine into grade ten together. We have many problems organizing that, but it is one of the things we are trying to do in terms of experimental organizational patterns.

 

What should be included in the program of an experimental school?

George Albert is a full-time musician who has only taught private lessons before because he wanted some time to write and play his own music. Being a full-time teacher would not allow him to do this at all. How would an experimental curriculum, with its staff opportunities, allow Mr. Albert to teach and have time to write his music?