Challenges

There are a lot of challenges in education. So after sixteen years in education, challenges should be nothing new to me, especially when starting a new program. One of the big challenges is that our teachers do not have a contract and have not had one for two years. Scheduling any after school meetings or trainings or asking them to do anything new is very difficult this year. Some of the elements of the project the team needs to accomplish are:

1) Get the students onto the Kuder Navigator system - it's been slow getting all the students onto the site because we have close to 500 students in our freshmen class. The guidance counselors have been working hard since we started using Kuder at the beginning of October. The personality tests take about 20 minutes each, so the students use at least one period to input their information and then to take one of the tests. This process is something we'll have to work out - do we have the students take the tests with the guidance counselors, during their phys. ed classes (which are two periods, two days per week) or do they take them at home?

2) Student-led conferences -- at the NJASCD PSLP workshop in September the team saw a video of student led conferences. Wow! What a powerful tool for the students. I loved how the students took ownership of their education. So I'll have to meet with the principal on our team and figure out how this can be done. It may not happen this year - but hey, the pilot program is two years.

3) Advisory period -- a key component in the student-led conferences is having advisors for the students. Setting up an advisory period or periods is going to prove challenging because when do we work it into the schedule, are we going to have to negotiate this with the union (and can we even do that) first or do we just make it part of the schedule once a month? I get energized and exhausted at the same time by all the ideas and things that could be with this PSLP program.

4) E-portfolios -- this is an element of the PSLP program I've discussed with the freshmen English teachers, but need to educate the teachers on these so the portfolios don't become a dumping ground for just anything. The e-portfolios could and should also be used as part of the student-led conferences.

I'm sure other challenges will come up along the way -- it wouldn't be education or life if there weren't challenges.

NJ ASCD and CSSR Workshop

On Sept. 22nd the first workshop for Personalized Student Learning Plans was held at NJPSA/FEA and it was called: Creating Student-Centered Learning Through Personalized Student Learning Plans.

To highlight some of the information:

• Event was sponsored by NJ ASCD and the Center for Secondary School Redesign, Inc.(http://www.cssr.us/index.htm -- as we all know secondary education in New Jersey is undergoing changes and the PSLP pilot program is part of that change (to see those changes check out the NJ DOE Power Points on the subject: http://www.state.nj.us/education/ser/over/).
• The workshop was research based.
• The presenters offered a basic template for how to organize a team to work on PSLPs (finding a team hasn't been problematic for us; it is being able to coordinate everyone's schedules to attend meetings, workshops etc... that has proved challenging).
• The presenters showed video of students conducting student conferences - this was terrific and an idea I really want to pursue. The video was Navigator 101, the name of the PSLP program in Washington.
• The presenters also showed video created by a high school in Washington about their PSLP program. Creating a video about the PSLP program is something my team would like to do in the future, and being a technical school with a tv studio, we should be able to do this and the students will be able to be the producers -- great real world practice!
• Advisory time was also discussed -- my team needs to talk about these and how we can implement this into our school year.

Whenever I attend these workshops, I get energized about the pilot program, but at the same time overwhelmed. My head was filled with all these great things to enhance our program -- student-led conferences, advisory periods, e-portfolios, -- and I started to have doubts about how we would accomplish everything. I am glad this is a two-year PILOT PROGRAM, so mistakes and missteps are part of the process.

While at the workshop I saw a few books that I've ordered for myself to preview to see if they will be valuable to the program and my team. The titles are:

The Advisory Guide: Designing and Implementing Effective Advisory Programs in Secondary Schools by Rachel A. Poliner and Carol Miller Lieber

Personalized Learning: Preparing High School Students to Create Their Futures by Joseph DiMartino, John Clarke and Denise Wolk

The Portfolio Organizer: Succeeding with Portfolios in Your Classroom by Carol Rolheiser, Barbara Bower, and Laurie Stevahn

A book I wanted to order but won in a drawing at the end of the workshop -- Personalizing the High School Experience for Each Student by Joseph DiMartino and John Clarke

I'll keep everyone updated at to the topics in these books and how well they helped us shape our PSLP program.