SchoolMatters Blog

This blog was maintained by Brian Wheeler while serving as At-Large Member of the Albemarle County School Board (2004-2010).

  • Home
  • About
  • Board Agendas
  • School Budget
  • Calendar
  • cvillepedia
  • RSS Feed
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Subscribe
My Photo

Links

  • Follow me on Twitter
  • My school email lists
  • Our School Budget
  • School Division

Categories

  • Achievement Gap (2)
  • Articles of Interest (1)
  • Athletics (15)
  • Blogging (11)
  • Books (1)
  • Budget (35)
  • Calendar (2)
  • Campaign 2007 (4)
  • City-County Cooperation (6)
  • College-level courses (2)
  • Community Engagement (10)
  • Conferences & Workshops (3)
  • Current Affairs (3)
  • Environment (2)
  • Extracurriculars (2)
  • Federal Funding (1)
  • Food Service - Nutrition (1)
  • General Assembly (2)
  • Gifted Education (1)
  • Goals & Priorities (2)
  • Graduation (1)
  • Graduation Stats (1)
  • Health and Wellness (7)
  • High Schools (7)
  • In our Classrooms (13)
  • In our community (3)
  • Long Range Planning (38)
  • Middle Schools (1)
  • NSBA (6)
  • Open Government (6)
  • Performance Measurements (1)
  • Podcasting (4)
  • Politics (1)
  • Public opinion - Surveys (1)
  • Reading List (2)
  • Redistricting (22)
  • Religion in Our Schools (4)
  • School Board Elections (10)
  • School construction (5)
  • Specialty Centers (2)
  • Sports (1)
  • State Funding (1)
  • Strategic Planning (2)
  • Student Conduct (15)
  • Student Council (3)
  • Students on School Board (5)
  • Superintendent Search (3)
  • Technical Education (1)
  • Topic Suggestions (1)
  • Transportation (2)
  • VSBA (2)
  • Web/Tech (1)
  • Weblogs (10)
  • World Languages (1)
See More
Blog powered by Typepad
Member since 07/2005

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

Posted on July 20, 2005 in Articles of Interest, Community Engagement, Goals & Priorities | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Search


  • Search SchoolMatters

Recent Posts

  • My resignation from the school board
  • 'City, county, get together': Daily Progress calls for talks about consolidation of schools
  • School Board approves $145.2 million funding request; Needs another $8.8 million in revenues to avoid Tier 2 & 3 cuts
  • Albemarle County Public Schools budget is now facing catastrophic cuts
  • Notes from 2-11-10 school board meeting - budget & 4x4 block schedules
  • Daily Progress Editorial: Revenue fight hurts region
  • City, county in clash over cash
  • Bell moves to shake up funding of area schools
  • Bell's budget amendment and city-county relations
  • Our presentation on Teleforums at the 2009 VSBA conference

Recent Comments

  • Amy Gore on My resignation from the school board
  • Larryb on My resignation from the school board
  • Jim Bain on My resignation from the school board
  • crabdragonman on My resignation from the school board
  • Jim Stern on Albemarle County Public Schools budget is now facing catastrophic cuts
  • Tandy Scott on Albemarle County Public Schools budget is now facing catastrophic cuts
  • bawheeler on Albemarle County Public Schools budget is now facing catastrophic cuts
  • Tandy Scott on Albemarle County Public Schools budget is now facing catastrophic cuts
  • Tandy Scott on Notes from 2-11-10 school board meeting - budget & 4x4 block schedules
  • Tandy Scott on Notes from 2-11-10 school board meeting - budget & 4x4 block schedules

Archives

  • August 2010
  • February 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009

More...