Week Nine Reflection

Chapter 21 has a lot of information in it and a lot of different ideas that make me think about my experiences in the classroom or future experiences that I may have in the classroom. The two ideas that I would like to speak more of are Step Up To Excellence and Product vs. Process Approaches to Change. 

Step Up To Excellence is something that I was interested in because it deals with changing the entire district and improving the district as a whole instead of just a specific classroom or a certain school in the district. I believe that school systems as a whole need to run smoothly together. Starting from PK or K, students should be exposed to the same type of ideas as they are in high school. Obviously not the same academic performance standards, just the environment of the schools should be similar in how they are run and their expectations of students as people. When an entire district strives for excellence and leaders from the schools in the district are making changes that are the same across the board, educators and students will feel more comfortable and confident because the district is working together toward a common goal. The transition from elementary to middle school and middle school to high school will become easier for students if leaders at each level have the same goals and ideas for excellence. The five steps to this process seem intense though. The first step, "Redesign entire school system" is overwhelming in itself...but in some schools (failing districts) it is absolutely necessary. Aligning the different levels, buildings, and leaders would also be a tough task. I know that this would take a lot of time and manpower to implement a design that will change an entire district, but if the system is failing, is there another choice? The book gives a lot of great ideas of how to strive for excellence as an entire district. I can see these things being extremely effective in maintaing a school system at a great level. To start from scratch with these tools (Strategic Leadership Teams, Cluster Improvement Teams, Site Improvement Teams...pg. 215) would be much more difficult. 

The second idea that was interesting to me was Product vs. Process Approaches to Change. This section speaks about product based change processes and how we need to find a "better understanding of the process of transforming schools and districts" (pg. 211). I agree with the book when it says that we should be able to have a process that will work in any situation or can be applied to several different things and still prove to be effective. I do believe that many times, educators are so worried about the end result, the product, and are not concerned about how we are ending up with that product. It is so much about the process to me, especially in an individual classroom with a specific student. Is this student really understanding how he or she got the answer or was it a lucky guess? What is the process that this student went through in order to get this result? How can I improve this process to make it easier for the student to understand the concept? If the process is polished, the product will be what we are looking for more often than not in the end.