Chapter+11

Chapter 11 - Anna

Flexible Organizational Structures

• Flexibility is the key characteristic of teaching when dealing with adolescents. • The best model for educating middle school kids is ever-changing learning organizations such as learning teams in schools. • Team structures alter and personalize the working relationships between students and teachers • Teams contribute to greater student contact and increase personalization
 * Introduction:**
 * Flexibility in:
 * Grouping
 * Scheduling
 * Staffing
 * As well as establish a shared responsibility between students that reduces stress and isolation

• Teams focus on coordinating classwork, tests, student behaviors, parental contacts, and special team activities. • Teams engage 4 broad sets of tasks • Team functioning is progressive • Threshold resources needed for team effectiveness • This is in addition to teachers prep period to further improve or assess students work • Smaller groups lead to more personalized time between student and teacher, leading to a more successful student • Team work takes time, therefore an adequate time spend working together helps create more successful planning • With these three threshold recourses team planning would be very successful, but these resources alone will not suffice, the school needs to be involved in the planning of teams and the flexibility that come with organizing these teams.
 * Team Tasks and Needs:**
 * Curriculum coordination
 * Coordination of student assignments, assessments and feedback
 * Parental contact and involvement
 * Contact with other building resource staff
 * Common planning time in excess of four times per week for an equivalent of 40 or more minutes per day
 * Team sizes of under 120 students with smaller teacher/student ratio
 * The length of time a team has been together.

• A team is a common set of teachers who work with a common group of students in a common section of a building with common expectations and who have a separate, common team planning time. • To establish teams in school, the strengths of teaching staff need to be assessed and considered. • Team sizes vary between grade to grade, but are not set in stone, usually younger kids are more comfortable working with a larger group. • As time and children mature, teachers become adept at team functioning and begin to recognize the benefits of smaller teams. • Support staff, such as special education teachers of gifted instructors are often assigned to teams to work in a collaborative fashion. • Building leadership teams are responsible for assigning the amount on teaches and the ratios of students within teams • Since this flexible organizational structure creates a know community of learners, parents and students quickly become identified with the team, thereby increasing the response capacity of the team to pinpoint student learning needs.
 * Applying Team Tasks and Needs to Responsive School Structures:**
 * Diversity is key in assessment, but these diverse teachers need to be held together by their common commitment to education of their students
 * These teachers will pull out students that need extra explanations, which will not hinder the progression of the team as a whole.
 * They also provide adequate time and resources for teams to function
 * They set team goals, team roles and responsibilities
 * Also involve parents in the planning and collaborating, as well as keeping them informed about the progress of teams by sending out newsletters and holding open houses.

• Instruction time is under purview of the team • Schedules of teams have to reflect the various students, therefore considered not common or ordinary • Teams have a block of time that allows for teachers to adjust and rearrange the instructional time as it sees necessary in order to achieve its goals. • Flexible teams adjust their schedules of a bimonthly bases depending on the progress of keeping with the curricular goals. • Teachers are able to group and regroup student across teams so the kids can get the chance of experiencing working with different students with different styles of learning. • Teaches differentiate instructions through the application of strategies such as collaborative learning, elaborated helping arrangements, progress-based grading, challenge activities, graphic and learning organizers. • The common planning time within the school day serves as a vehicle for ongoing professional development through team dialogue and problem solving, which are a natural part of team life.
 * Flexible Use of Time to Enhance Instruction**
 * This is to identify individual strengths, need and styles of learning and teaching.

• A flexible organizational structure is the framework that gives life to a developmentally responsive middle school. • Structural changes increase the chances that instructional changes will occur. • Through the skillful guidance of committed teams of teachers acting in the best interests of their students, their students have the chance for a lifetime of possibilities.
 * The Structure’s the Thing**