Actions and explanations… Dates Out of order… the first activity I’d like to speak about is the SIP Leadership position in 1996 – 1998. For your knowledge, every school in DODEA must be accredited. Every three years, every school is visited by an accreditation team (two lead people from a company from the states and then fellow educators from other DODEA schools)who evaluate the School Improvement Plan the school has put together. The team confirms the school’s Mission, Vision and Goal statements, looks at test scores, interviews parents, teachers and students to evaluate the school’s climate and goes around the school observing the education process in action to see if the SIP is being followed and working. Schools either pass or fail. Sometimes a school may continue with the same plan by modifying some goals or expectations. Or a school may choose to try something new but… This plan is always selected by all educators in the school. The plan is based on student test scores and the climate in the school and what would be best for the school as a whole. So now to me…the school I was in, in 1996, was just starting the school year with our fourth principal in four years. The educators were really running the school, and things were going pretty good. We were in the first year of our SIP plan but our new Principal could tell the school really wasn’t following the plan nor aligned with Mission, Vision and Goal statements. My Principal met with my friend Don and myself and begged us as leaders of the school, to take a leadership role and she would back us 100%. To this day Rosemarie Arnestad is far and away the best Principal I have ever worked for. IF she called me tomorrow and said she needed my help as a teacher, I would go. Okay…I’m telling this story because if anyone has worked in a school and tried to get teachers to do/try something new it can be very difficult. Don and I came up with a plan and pulled the SIP team together…ateacher leader from every grade level and the specialists. We also included a team member from all the aides that worked in the school (never been done before) (Our principal paid them a bonus) and the cafeteria manager. We first needed to change our Mission,Vision and Goal statements to better fit our population which we did. Our SIP plan we were working off of dealt with math skills, problem solving. Since we only had 2 years to go we decided to stay with that skill for improvement. But then we got inventive. Germany, or Europe for that matter, is very big on recycling. We decided we would choose recycling as a goal for the school and develop hands on projects and lessons the students would actually participate in and then teachers in their respective grade levels would create lessons that would involve number and story problems applicable to the activities. Our principal stepped up to plate by telling teachers that this program would now replace our current math program so teachers would not be doing double lesson plans. I’m not going bore you all the activities and programs that went on for the two years. But…our school was recognized by our local military community and the city of Kaiserslautern for our recycling projects. And of course, we passed our accreditation visit with flying colors. The two people from the states said they had never seen a project based program that helped raise test scores and involved the community so much!!! 1992 – 1994 Vice President of Legislation European PTA (EPTA) Again a short explanation…EPTA is a state member of the National PTA. When I was serving, the make up was….the 50 states, Washington DC, us and the Pacific PTA (DODEA schools in the Pacific). So, who is EPTA? Any DODEA school in Europe may sell memberships, do bylaws etc… therefore belong to EPTA, Yes, it’s a very big area. 2
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