Principal as a Student Week Post-Mortem Several people have asked how my week as a student wrapped up. The short answer would be: busy. Similar to many students, I also had a part-time job (doing the Executive Director duties I could not reasonable delegate), church youth activities (where I am a leader), family duties (my beautiful wife and five kids), and attempts at personal time. One of the tasks that was put off because I also had homework to do and the bus back and forth to school was finishing my blog posts. One of the things we have been reviewing this semester is the homework load expected of our students - especially given the other things that they may be involved in and respect for family time. Parents should have received (or be receiving) a letter regarding our homework review and the action plan we have from those findings. For those that have not received the letter (or are not ICHS parents), here is the jist of what we found and are doing: 1) Research suggests that around 2 hours of homework a night or 7-12 hours per week (on average for the average student) , improves student achievement in high school. 2) ICHS will continue to provide and expect completion of 10ish hours of high-quality homework a week to ensure that our students are prepared for college and STEM careers. 3) Research also suggests that above the 2 hrs a night or 7-12 hrs a week, that the benefit of homework diminishes. 4) In discussions with the faculty, we have come up with a plan to use the research as guidance for the amount of homework that each content area should be able to assign and still stay within the 10ish hours a week. Key to this plan is for each teacher to have a class meeting each day with students. During this time teachers will review assignments due, get feedback from students on how long homework actual took (so that the teacher can try to stay within the guideline amount of homework that can be assigned from his/her content), and review upcoming work. It is also hoped that this 2-5 minute meeting will prompt students to turn in work and reduce any confusion about assignments - and thereby reduce some of the harried feeling that I experienced as a student for the week. During the week, I also noticed a handful of facilities/equipment fixes we can make to improve the student experience immediately, including such things as adjusting projectors in a few rooms, ensuring every room has basic office tools available for student use, purchase of more ClearPlay machines, not assigning anyone to the dreaded corner lockers if we dont have to, etc. There are also some new things that we will explore or train on as a faculty: Standards-aligned questioning strategies, classroom expectations postings, after-school tutoring tracking, extra-credit policies, etc. Being with students (as a student) was a wonderful experience. I look forward to additional similar experiences in future years. It is from these experiences and feedback from our parents, students, other stakeholders, and current research/best practice that we are able to prioritize the next most impactful improvement to our program.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 20:09:40 +0000
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