Clay_Projects

The Shawnee Mission School District has begun informing elementary teachers of a change to the mode music, art, concrete educational activity and library classes — "specials," as they are commonly known — will be scheduled for 2016-2017 school twelvemonth. And while district officials betoken to improvements in efficiency and consistency as main drivers for the move, some specials teachers say the change will hamper their ability to plan.

Starting adjacent twelvemonth, the district will move to what it calls an "ABCD" specials schedule. Where before long elementary classes have their weekly sections of fine art, music, PE and library on prepare days of the week and at various times throughout the day, the new schedule will have a classroom attend its specials on a iv-mean solar day rotation, with each specials section offered at the same fourth dimension each day.
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IN BRIEF

• SMSD moving to schedule that creates consistent iv-twenty-four hours rotation for fine art, music, library, PE
• District says new schedule will even out time-in-form for all students, allow for improve class-level collaboration
• Some art teachers say changes will cutting into planning time
• Critics ask why district didn't consider adding a 5th special, like language or technology[/pullquote]
For example, under the electric current system, a fourth course form's specials schedule might look like this:

  • Every Monday: Art, 11 a.1000.-noon
  • Every Tuesday: Music, 9:30 a.m-ten:30 a.thou.
  • Every Wednesday: No specials class
  • Every Thursday: Library, 9:10 a.thousand. to 10 a.m.
  • Every Friday: Physical Instruction, x a.1000. to 11 a.1000.

Under the new ABCD system, the schedule would look like this:

  • Monday (A): Art, x a.yard.-x:50 a.m.
  • Tuesday (B): Music, ten a.m.-10:l a.yard.
  • Wednesday (C): Library, x a.m.-ten:50 a.one thousand.
  • Thursday (D): Concrete Didactics, 10 a.m.-x:50 a.g.
  • Friday (A): Art, 10 a.yard.-10:50 a.g.
  • Monday (B): Music, 10 a.1000.-10:l a.m.
  • Etc…

The new organisation is expected to yield two major benefits, say administrators. For one, it would provide a set block of time each twenty-four hours when students' classroom teachers could run across for collaborative planning. Part of the district's recent push has been to increment the amount of interaction between teachers to allow them to plan special projects for students and work together to find potential solutions to beliefs issues. (See our story on the innovative schoolhouse model coming to Apache Elementary next year). Instead of having a grade level's teachers' windows of planning time spread at inconsistent times throughout the day, the ABCD scheduling will permit all of the school's fourth grade teachers, for example, run into collaboratively at the aforementioned time each mean solar day.

"In club to be able to collaborative, they needed more time during schoolhouse day, and more consistency during the school mean solar day," said Kevin Hansford, Director of Elementary Championship and Early Babyhood for Shawnee Mission, of the change.

Moreover, the new scheduling volition smoothen out the corporeality of fourth dimension each kid gets in specials classes. Because there are and so many days throughout the year when schoolhouse is out on Fridays, students who had certain specials classes on that day of the week got significantly less exposure to the subject than classmates whose classrooms had the aforementioned bailiwick on Tuesday or Wednesday. For instance, a student whose class had art on Fridays would only get ane,560 minutes of time in art grade throughout the yr while his peers who had art on Tuesday or Wednesday would get 2,280 minutes of fine art course time. Under the new scheduling, all students would become 2,150 minutes in each specials section each year

Just the change has drawn criticism from a number of specials teachers, who say information technology represents the latest reduction of resource for programs that have already seen significant cuts over the past several years. With the exception of library, with meets for 50 minutes, all of the specials sections currently meet for threescore minutes each day. Under the ABCD system, all specials classes volition encounter for fifty minutes, and teachers will pick upwardly more sections throughout the week. One art teacher said she'll motion from education 25 classes per calendar week with 300 minutes of planning time built in to 30 classes per week with only 250 minutes of planning time built in. That planning time is precious for teachers who have to get instructions and materials prepared for elementary schoolhouse art projects or PE activities.

Beth Koon, an art teacher at Ray Marsh Unproblematic School, said the change will have a noticeable impact on her power to provide a quality experience for her students.

"With this new schedule, art teachers will non have time for training or recovery for the innovative projects that students create, of the kind and quality that Shawnee Mission parents accept come to look from the district. Anyone who has ever made art projects with children understands that in that location is a lot of training and cleanup involved," Koon said. "There are also activities that we simply cannot inquire small children to do. We, as teachers, must do it for them, and examples include, but are not limited to: loading and firing a kiln, wedging clay, using a 30-inch paper-cutter, displaying artwork in our schools and at district shows, etc…"

Those out-of-the-classroom duties accept become more than time consuming as the district cutting back staffing for specials programs in recent years. Each specials section used to accept its own full-fourth dimension districtwide coordinator whose job it was to accommodate all-commune events and keep teachers apprised of new developments in the field. That role was cut back to function-time a few years ago. This year, the positions were eliminated.

While administrators acknowledge that the new schedule will cut into planning time for specials teachers, they point out that it brings those teachers' fourth dimension more in line with their counterparts in grade-level classrooms. Now, classroom teachers have only 230 minutes of planning fourth dimension spread throughout their weeks, and it comes at variable hours. With the new schedule, classroom teachers and specials teachers will all have 250 minutes of planning time each week. What's more, the new scheduling volition reduce the demand for specials teachers to travel between schools in some cases.

"This is non the primary reason, but it is more efficient for the school commune," said Assistant Superintendent for Instructional Leadership Michelle Hubbard. "It is much more efficient, while also benefitting kids. When you lot have fewer people traveling, that puts more time back in the classroom with kids."

Merely for Koon and many of her fellow specials teachers, the all-time solution to the issues seemed non to be a new schedule that cut into their planning fourth dimension. It was the add-on of a fifth specials department — like foreign language or a engineering science form — like many other districts utilise.

"It is the strongly held belief of many Shawnee Mission specialist teachers that the ABCD schedule will adversely affect the quality of teaching that students receive in specials. Additionally, classroom teachers should have at least 1 60 minutes of programme fourth dimension per mean solar day, or more, but non at the price of cutting quality of specials," Koon said. "The solution is elementary: Shawnee Mission should take five specials – one for each of the v days of the school week – just like the other nearby districts on block scheduling which have five specials. What Shawnee Mission parents should actually be asking is why their children don't deserve as rich and well-rounded an education every bit students in other districts."