ISLLC Standard 6: A school administrator is an educational leader who promotes the success of all students by understanding, responding to, and influencing the larger political, social, economic, legal and cultural context.
Creating a Global Community Within a School
Statement of Purpose: Creating a diverse climate within a school that
Questions the study answers:
1) How does the administrator balance academic instructional time and socialization?
2) In what ways can an assembly provide experiences that regular classroom instruction cannot?
3) How does a school utilize community members in creating the global community environment while still embracing their differences?
Situation: My middle school, IC, is one of four middle schools within our district. In the last ten years, our school culture has changed from one of a very rural school serving mainly white students to one of more of a suburban school serving students who are not only black, white, Hispanic, Ukranian, Romanian, Caribbean, and a variety of others as well as being from our former rural setting to urban and suburban settings.
With state and federal guidelines requiring that certain times each day be spent on academics, it can be difficult to provide “social” experiences for our students that are not only social in nature, but that are educational as well. As our world continues to shrink with 24 hour news, hundreds of television stations, cell phones, and the Internet, students are exposed to a variety of different settings. As educators, we need to make sure that students are accepting of those who are different than they are. Students need to learn that while something may be different, that doesn’t make it wrong. These kinds of differences can be in our clothing, our music, our customs, our art, our religion, and many, many others.
Providing experiences that celebrate differences can be difficult not only in that they take away from instructional time, but also because you have difficulty finding financial and human resources. To present assemblies or activities for students that are outside the norm, you first must find those types of sources. This often requires time on the part of your already over-extended personnel, whether they are faculty members or community volunteers. The planning often begins at the beginning of the year and stretches through the school year.
You also have to find the money to fund these activities. Many of the cultural activities are from outside the school and require either a flat rate or reimbursement for their costs. Providing these funds can be difficult in that you must determine how to fund them, either through the school budget or through fund-raisers.
Another issue in this is in teaching your students appropriate behavior in these types of settings. Students are often exposed to assemblies in small groups or in outdoor venues, but many are not familiar with behavior in indoor venues. This is an important part of their social education and schools are remiss when they do not provide these kinds of experiences to their students. However, students must understand that inappropriate behavior will not be tolerated and then those expectations must be reinforce throughout the year when these activities are presented.
Questions with Answers:
1) How does the administrator balance academic instructional time and socialization?
Mrs. Strong is very conscious of the school’s schedule and how instructional time is utilized. She is also, though, aware of the social needs of our students. We have tried to offer different opportunities to our students so that they are exposed to many different kinds of assemblies. Of course, we have the fundraiser assemblies with our students to “pump” them up before a fund-raiser to ensure that we have the additional monies need throughout the eyar. In addition, we have pep rallies in which all three grade levels participate. We also have speakers for various reasons throughout the year. Often, opportunities arise at the last minute that are educational in scope in ways that many of us would not have normally experienced. Some examples include when we had the opportunity for David Pollock, UGA football star, to come and speak with our students in an assembly. We also had a young many from our community come and speak with our students are part of his court-appointed community service. Because he grew up here and he was known by some of our students, the words he spoke about drugs and their affect on his life had far more power than those of a teacher in a classroom. While some might say that those experiences might not necessarily be “instructional”, they were educational.
2) In what ways can an assembly provide experiences that regular classroom instruction cannot?
Our administrator, over the last seven years, has provided a variety of experiences to our students. Our chorus teacher, since we opened, has received an annual grant for our “Patchwork Arts Festivals” and through this, we have been able to provide artists in many different disciplines. They include, but are not limited to, Soweto Street Dancers (African), Indonesian Dancers, Mariachi bands, a bag-pipe player, a Cherokee Indian artisan in both music and carving pipes, quilters, costume makers, cake decorators, jewelry makers, caricaturists, Japanese artists, sculptors, a black-smith, a spray-paint artist, our local choruses and bands, as well as a variety of others. The festival is held every year the week prior to Spring Break and is available to students at all grade levels. When Coretta Scott King passed away, our students watched the memorial service and were given study guides to utilize as they talked about her life and how important she has been to our history. We have had Black History Month celebrations in which our students participated, as well as observed. We have outside speakers come in and talk with our students about the importance of education to all students, but we also utilize our students in a chorus, dance companies, and presenters during the celebration. There is a poetry contest, a door decorating contest, and a variety of activities in which our students can participate. This year, we have had a woman, for our eighth grade students, come in on several occasions speaking about colonial Georgia for their Georgia History class. She has brought in clothing, toys, household items, and even food items prepared as they were in colonial times. All of these experiences are important to the social education of the students and have all be academically educational as well. While some of these experiences could be in a small classroom setting, through the funding and/or time schedule of the presenters, we often would be limited in the number of students who could attend. Money and time constraints often don’t allow for small group assemblies, but the content from the assembly is important enough to utilize instructional time for an assembly. In these situations, the use of the funds and time will enhance the lives of the students in a way that classroom instruction could not.
3) How does a school utilize community members in creating the global community environment while still embracing their differences?
Community involvement is something that many schools struggle with. At IC, we struggle with it, as well. Again, part of the problem is money. When asking the community for help, it is often easier for them to provide financial support, rather than the human support in the way of time and/or speakers. Either one can be difficult in obtaining. We have a very difficult time keeping our Partners In Education. Of course, in these difficult financial times, many companies are downsizing their contributions to these areas, as well. We do have some success in bringing local speakers in. We have had visits from the Board of Education members, the Chamber of Commerce, and a variety of local groups interested in learning about the schools in our community. The Chamber provided us with a list of speakers who could be utilized throughout the year. Another way to look at the global community is one way we have tried at IC: that is to get the students involved in the community. Mrs. Strong has fostered our community outreach through allowing the collection of money for Relay for Life, as well as allowing the school to sponsor the team. She has also allowed one of our enrichment classes to make crocheted afghans to donate to the local Cancer program. Another enrichment class has helped to maintain the athletic fields at the school which shows that there are a variety of ways to support the school. Our students participate in different activities such as the Seat Belt Safety Poster Contest, the local library’s bookmark contest, Academic Bowl, the Duke Talent Identification Program, the school, county, regional and state science fairs, etc. We have sponsored canned food drives during the holidays to help fill the local food bank. Our students have written letters to soldiers and we have students who have attended the state legislature during the annual Page visits. We have teachers who participate in walks for different charities and teachers are allowed to pay to wear jeans on specific days. During those days, teachers wear stickers that say what charity they are representing that day, showing support for those are less fortunate. I sponsor a quarterly Job Shadow Day for the students in my 8th grade classes. They go to work for the day with someone they know. They experience work for a day and then must report back on that experience, including a short report and an evaluation of their work for that day from their “employer”.
Grade of Administrator:
I would grade Mrs. Strong as Proficient in this standard. She works very hard at providing as many culturally enhancing experiences as she can with the resources that she has. She is a role model for all of us in respecting each person for their own worth and for helping to understand each person’s cultural differences. Mrs. Strong has worked hard over the last seven years to help us build a strong foundation in knowing how to provide these and for scheduling them to provide the most impact. She knows the state requirements for academic time and knows how to help the teachers provide the instructional activities with the most impact as often as possible.