Speaking at a community forum on the planned extension of the school year under a pilot program, teachers and administrators in the New London Public Schools said a number of different strategies will be employed and that collaboration with community partners will be included.
New London was one of 11 districts in five states selected for an extension of the school year by 300 hours, beginning in the 2013-2014 school year. Kate Ericson, chief academic officer for New London Public Schools, said each of the participating schools will design its own strategy for how to implement the extra hours.
“There’s no one model for how this looks,” said Ericson. “There’s no cookie cutter approach.”
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Under the three-year pilot program, Bennie Dover Jackson Middle School and the district’s elementary schools will each receive the additional school time. Dr. Nicholas Fischer, superintendent of New London Public Schools, said additional learning time will also be included at New London High School as part of an improvement grant.
The program is being financed by federal, state, and local funding as well as the Ford Foundation and National Center on Time and Learning. East Hartford and Meriden are also taking part in the pilot program.
Ericson said the hours may be included in normal school days, weekends, and summer months. She said the elements of the program will include focusing on school-wide priorities, individual academic intervention and acceleration, targeted teacher development and collaboration, increasing expectations, and engagement in enrichment programs.
“We are not going to have a circus in our buildings,” said Ericson. “We’re not going to have 40 things that just make no sense.”
Alison Ryan, principal of Bennie Dover Jackson Middle School, said schools will be working to utilize the additional hours in ways that benefit their school improvement plan. She said the middle school is looking to increasing reading and vocabulary comprehension as well as further development of existing enrichment program, such as cooperation with local colleges and organizations.
“Really what we’re talking about at Bennie Dover is getting better at what we’re doing,” said Ryan.
Ed Sweeney, after-school coordinator at the middle school, said he enjoys working with such partners and that there are “tremendous opportunities within our own community.”
Margaret Lewis, a fifth grade teacher at Jennings School, said strategies will focus on how schools best use time and resources. She said schools are also looking to build sustainable models that can continue after the end of the pilot program, saying one possibility would be staggering when teachers start their day to extend the school day without affecting the length of a teacher’s workday.
“When the money runs out—which it will—we need to design programs that can keep going,” said Lewis.
I also don't know what the transportation plans are for these extended learning times but I'm hoping they're good or those weekend classes and summer classes will be very empty. I guess Paul Simon said it best; "When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school it's a wonder I can think at all. Though my lack of education hasn't hurt me none I can read the writing on the wall". In this case the writing reads; EPIC FAILURE IN PROGRESS. Let's face it, if they can't manage to educate students during the course of a normal day (and most of them can't anymore), what makes anyone think that more time is the answer to the problem? Or more money? Being the product of a 1980's NLPS edumacation and having the monumental displeasure of dealing with the NLPS on behalf of my daughters, I think more effective teachers is the answer. Not time.
LB...your immediate during and after school prospect careers didn't include keyboards, so you didn't have them. Your possible careers didn't have a computer with incredible technology easily implemented (like spell checkers) included in it...so you had to spend MORE TIME on those things. Calculators weren't as sophisticated, inexpensive, and everywhere you look as they are now...so you NEEDED to know how to do it without. Public education didn't care if you knew all the details of history - just the bits they wanted you to learn to coincide with the country they were guiding (example: howard zinn's A Peoples History of the United States of America). Things are different now, at least we still use #2 pencils in elementary school so you can still have something to compare with kids today. As for "more effective teachers", if you would please do some research into how teaching is evaluated...I'd hope you'd come back and apologize to the teachers. The method our country uses for evaluations is terrible, testing and standardized testing have a decades long history of failing to adequately show the effectiveness of teaching since it fails to measure creativity, critical thinking, and so many other intangibles outside of regirgitating information that has been drilled over and over. Teaching the test is another wide-spread unfortunate consequence of focusing on tests. A short time learning about finland's education sytem will open your eyes.
The Board of Education has also started holding roundtable conversations with parents at 5:30 p.m. prior to Board of Education meetings, including one tonight.