School’s Out for Students, Not Educators
DMPS administrators and principals gather for a photo during the 2016 Leadership Launch at the Iowa Events Center.
One of many misconceptions about public education is that educators follow the students right out the door on the last day of school, hang up the “GONE FISHIN’” sign and take the summer off. The truth is, no sooner does one school year end than planning begins in earnest for the next.
A good case in point culminated on Friday at Hy-Vee Hall where almost 400 leaders from all 60 DMPS schools wrapped up their three-day Leadership Launch for the 2016-17 year which won’t officially begin until August 24th when students return.
School teams gathered around tables in a cavernous central meeting room to hear some marching orders for the day at what’s essentially a mini-convention of the school district. Later they buckled down to finish the work on drafts of their respective School Improvement Plans. SIPs set both academic and behavioral targets.
The district’s director of assessment, Dr. Mary Grinstead, explained a shift from reliance on proficiency with regard to annual goal-setting to a focus on growth. That was greeted by smattered applause.
The emphasis on data in plotting instructional strategies is common sense. But by itself data is an insufficient tool. Before the large group broke into school teams an excerpt was presented from a recent address by James E. Ryan, dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He summed up the aspiration that every child; every student has in common by referencing the poem Late Fragment by Raymond Carver:
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
That’s what all of the data and the jargon is about. That’s every teacher’s underlying objective. Building proficiency in their labors of love is called professional development. It leads, in turn, to more measurable proficiencies in math and reading for their students. And there’s no telling where that may lead.
Next year shapes up as an especially pivotal one for DMPS. Six schools will form the pilot cohort called Schools for Rigor paving a new way that all of the others in the district will follow in the two subsequent years. It does not include much room for any time spent GONE FISHIN’.
