Teachers Meet to Learn How Their Voices Can Help Reshape Schools

More than 200 San Diego city schoolteachers voluntarily spent Saturday together without pay to show that the ideas in a 1987 report on preparing area schools for the year 2000 and beyond are not gathering dust on neglected bookshelves.

The daylong “Super Saturday” session in Balboa Park centered on ways that teachers can carry out fundamental school reforms by having a greater voice in how subjects are taught, in how children are counseled and disciplined, and in how parents and the community can be persuaded to offer more support for the public school system.

Five-member teams from 41 elementary, middle, junior and senior highs spent most of the day in informal groups with principals and teachers from school districts throughout the country who have pioneered educational changes. The outcome appeared to be greater determination on the part of several schools to move forward with teaching experiments beginning as early as next year.

Ex-Principal’s Warning

A former New York principal who spurred major changes at three high schools in that city’s troubled district set the backdrop for the workshops in his keynote address. Ken Tewel warned teachers that 35 national reports over the past five years have strongly established the fact that public schools are not performing as well as they should. Those reports have said that the nation’s future international competitiveness depends on long-term educational improvements.

“We are on probation,” Tewel told his audience, adding that unless schools are restructured by teachers to inspire more of their colleagues to do better, public education will be “suspended and perhaps expelled” from its dominant position as the molder of children’s futures.

Though there is reason for optimism, Tewel said, changing schools around is about as easy as “moving a cemetery.” Given the emphasis that educators place on protecting America’s world stature, it was ironic that Saturday’s session was paid for by the Matsushita Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the Japanese conglomerate best-known in this country for its Panasonic electronic products.

Debate on Study Opened

Top San Diego administrators have taken the warning messages to heart, moving quickly to open debate on the study issued by the district’s Schools of the Future Commission last summer. That report strongly recommended restructuring of schools to give teachers and principals much greater flexibility to carry out guidelines set by the state and district. Some individuals have tried innovative programs, but too many teachers still believe that bureaucratic obstacles will block their efforts to meet needs that vary from school to school, the report concluded.

Saturday’s conference was a major step by the district to solicit proposals from schools wanting to be in the forefront of what administrators hope will be a sustained wave of change in San Diego over the next several years. And if the hoped-for success in both academic and social skills results from many of those proposals, officials believe that other schools will follow as parents and community leaders put pressure on them to improve also.

Among those Saturday hoping to be on the cutting edge was a team from Correia Junior High School in Point Loma, which already has put together a preliminary plan for a pilot restructuring in the fall.

“Basically, we’re talking about setting up a catalyst for change,” Principal Mike Lorch said. “We’ve looked specifically at restructuring our academic classes so that teachers would have more control over how to use instructional time, to experiment and see what works best.”

The school’s plan calls for placing three teachers and 100 eighth-graders representative of all ethnic groups and achievement levels into a “school within a school.” The students would be grouped in the “family team setting” for English, math and social science.

“A lot of these ideas come from suggestions in state and national middle school reports recommending that large units be broken down and things be made more familial,” Lorch said, referring in particular to the need for greater self-esteem and motivation among adolescents who wrestle with issues of physical growth and maturity as well as a tougher level of academics.

Lorch originally envisioned social science and foreign language classes as part of the proposal, but several teachers at the school are not convinced of the plan and lobbied to keep other subjects out for the moment.

“I understand the resistance, and the way to challenge it is to show that the (new program) works and then ask other teachers if they wouldn’t like to be a part of it,” Lorch said.

Sam Sample, one of the Correia teachers who volunteered to be part of the team, asked two reform teachers from Jefferson County, Ky., whether the team concept has resulted in better motivation and engagement on the part of students.

“I wouldn’t go back to a self-contained (individual) classroom even if my job depended on it,” Cheryl Ungerleider said. “You get to know the kids better (with team grouping), and it is evident that the kids do feel better about themselves and each other.”

Sample praised the workshop for showing that school restructuring should be an ongoing process that teachers must continue to participate in, with no “package answers” suggesting a single way to carry out reforms.

“I’m not used to seeing this in education,” he said. “We either have the theory of being totally a free-lance or being totally in lock step (with rules) from above.”

And he agreed with other teachers that flexibility in instruction does not mean lack of structure and discipline, as was thought during previous reforms in the 1970s, which many educators believe worsened the nation’s public school situation.