SchoolMatters Weblog

William Raspberry: A Culture for Teaching

William Raspberry wrote an opinion piece in Monday's Washington Post entitled "A Culture for Teaching."  He described the work of James P. Comer, "the Yale professor of psychiatry and the mind behind the Comer School Development Program, a highly successful model for transforming urban schools."

I am not familiar with Dr. Cromer's work, but I share his belief that we as a school system need to foster better relationships with children and parents (community engagement) and we need to build professional "learning communities."

Raspberry describes Cromer's insight as follows: "Curriculum reform, new governance models, stiffer tests for students and teachers may be fine, but there's no magic in them. The magic is in a culture that supports child and adolescent development, and that can happen only through relationships..."

"Comer says, most teachers and school administrators haven't acquired (because they haven't been taught in teachers' colleges) the skills to create learning communities. That, he says, has to change. And his Comer School Development Program aims to change it by retraining teachers, administrators -- and parents."

For the past several years, Albemarle County Public Schools have been incorporating the goal of creating "learning communities" into our professional development training for our teachers and administrators (Rick DuFour is the national guru on this subject and I have sat in on his training sessions with our staff).  I am pleased this objective will be more clearly described in our 2005-2007 Board Superintendent Priorities.

Second, fueled by strong feedback in our strategic planning process and community focus groups over the past year, we are also undertaking a new community engagement initiative with the recent appointment of  Chris Dyer into the new position of Director of Community Engagement for the school division.   

I'll be talking more about both these subjects in the months ahead.  Brian

New Vision & Mission

In May 2005, the Albemarle County School Board approved a revised vision statement, mission, goals, and statement of core values (See Policy AE).  A group of staff, parents and community leaders worked very hard on this as part of our strategic plan update.  I want to share the vision and mission statements which came out of this process and which I am personally very excited about.

Vision
All learners believe in their power to embrace learning, to excel, and to own their future.

Mission
The Albemarle County Public Schools’ core purpose is to establish a community of learners and learning, through rigor, relevance, and relationships, one student at a time.

Brian