K-3 Principals & Assistants
K-3 Principals and assistants: you are going to be the key players to recovering this lost generation academically. What you do, how you do it and what you use to implement the learning process will either help this student population to recover their lost year and a half of learning or lose them permanently. You will need to set up teams of teachers to evaluate each child and then to give them specific lessons. This will be your chance to show true leadership in your schools. You will make the decisions that will shape thousands of children’s lives, their life choices and their careers. Learning is much more than being plunked down in front of a computer and watching the tv monitor. Pay great attention to Great Idea #1 – Get organized. How you build your teaching staff and team will be the key to your success.
WHERE DO WE START?
Again, my biggest concern is with the preK and grades K-3. I believe that we are going to have to develop a team approach to determine exactly where each child is at one child at a time. This is going to be time consuming and exasperating as we have hit a paradigm shift and everyone is now back to ground zero. How do we do it?
A SUGGESTION ON HOW TO RECOVER
Assemble a team of educators to evaluate each child.
Interview the child and the parents to determine the child’s socialization level and ability to respond to the simplest questions: ABC’s, counting numbers, etc. This part will increase in difficulty as you deal with older children.
Test scores – look deeply at the standardized tests and evaluate where the child stands. Using math and reading scores, establish a base line for each child based on the scores.
Then, you will be able to identify where to start academically with each child.
Sounds like an academic IEP for each child. It sounds that way because it is.
This will be an ongoing activity of meetings and deciding what curricula will be implemented for each child.
The teacher will be able to do group instruction based on the needs of each group of students.
Let’s say your building has three first grades of 20 kids per grade, you should be able to do ability groupings within these sixty students.
Will this be easy? It will not be easy. You will need to be constantly evaluating and updating curricula for each child. Some will do well with group instruction. Others will shine with one on one instruction and a third group will like using the computer.
Needless to say, your school district will have to buy into this kind of approach. As Principal, you have the responsibility of selecting which staff will work together and which staff will deliver the various specific kinds of instruction. This will cause infighting as each teacher will feel that the other teachers got the better deal. This is where your leadership will have to make sure that each teacher is doing their best on a daily basis. Needless to say, what is in the best interest of the child.