Educating the Educators

The absolute priority of the Vernon Board of Education is to educate our children in a safe environment. That should be the goal for any school system! What we have to keep in mind while we do that is that the Board of Education is also one of the largest employers in our town. We employ a hundreds of people in a multitude of fields and specialties, and every one of them has the potential to impact a student whether they know it or not. A good 80 percent of our $47 million budget goes to pay and benefits. As we focus on educating our kids we also have the responsibility to be a good employer and to understand the needs of our staff.

A question I've gotten a lot from parents lately is about how our teachers get trained when something new is introduced. It's actually a very good point. Teachers are quite often asked to adopt new curriculum, teaching methods, and technology at the drop of a hat. It is understandable when something new like a smart board is introduced to the classroom that a teacher might be hesitant about using it. With the smart boards for instance we made sure to purchase training time so that the staff could learn how to start using them. We have Professional Development days to introduce new teaching methods and review results. We bring in recognized leaders in their fields to help our staff focus on the initiatives being implemented by Dr. Conway.  We do our best when we are introducing something new to remember that the staff has to actually buy-in to implementing it. One of the best ways anyone learns is to do!

One of the things we have done for the last year is use Teacher Coaches. We were able to use some of the grant money we received last year to give 4 volunteers the opportunity to become a peer resource for the rest of the district. The program has been very successful, and the coaches have dealt with dozens of teachers and staff to help with everything from individualized instruction to classroom teaching methods. We are fortunate that we have had the opportunity to implement the program and I hope we can consider keeping it once the grant money expires.

As we continue to expand the reach of technology in our schools and the ponder the reinvention of the curriculum, we need to keep two things in mind... is it good for the students, and is it doable by the staff? Only if both of those things are true should we be implementing something new. Otherwise we need to evaluate the weaknesses, remediate them if possible, and move on if not. I'm glad that we have taken the approach we have over the last year and I look forward to many more years of keeping Vernon's school system something to be proud of.

The opinions in this blog are mine and not necessarily those of the Board of Education.