Category Archive

Debi Klotz is principal at Rincon Intermediate School.

This school year (2008-09), Rincon had the opportunity to create its own strategic plan based on the district’s new strategic plan. We also designed ways to implement the plan at Rincon. Part of the purpose of this process was to lay the groundwork and foundation for other schools to follow. It was the resources and support from the Ball Partnership that enabled us to engage in this process. Our work with Ball also made it possible for us to think outside the box and start coming up with some new ideas.

We started by putting together a core committee made up of myself, parents, teachers, students, and classified staff. The people who made up this team were selected from different programs, and included parents who were already involved at the school. This core team developed a mission statement, objectives, and four tactics that will guide the future direction of the school.

After we developed these things, other teachers, classified staff, parents, and students got to volunteer to be on a tactic team. They investigated and developed ideas of what each tactic might look like for us at Rincon. So far, we’ve come up with plans to start implementing some of the tactics for next school year. We realize that it’s a flexible model, so it will be changing as we go. But we’ve come up with some really creative and innovative ways to help kids learn and enhance their literacy.

Our first tactic has to do with building the school community. We’re going to be exploring the way our school is physically structured. One of the things that is really difficult to do is find the main office because it’s right in the middle of the school and all the buildings look exactly the same. No one can tell you where the front of the school is because everyone comes in through the back. One of the ideas was to jazz up the front of the school a little more so people would know that’s the front. Then maybe we could paint some roadrunner footprints (the roadrunner is our school mascot) that lead people to the office – a “follow me to the office” kind of thing. Like when you go to a hospital and they tell you to follow the blue line or the yellow line.

Our second tactic deals with “school to high school” and “school to college/career.” We have the Career Pathways program at the high schools, and there’s a seventh and eighth grade component that gets the students to begin identifying career paths. We want the students to do a career interest inventory so they can get more in tune with their career paths and start talking about them more. We want them to see the connection from intermediate school to high school to college, keeping their college/career interests in mind.

The third tactic is about public relations for the school. That group talked a lot about changing the logo of our school. We won’t be doing that next year, but we will be enhancing our technology and communications. Our website is not very good, so I’m having some previous Rincon students who are currently in high school do some technology work over the summer. One of them has become quite a webmaster, so he’s going to design a new webpage for us next year. We’re also going to start doing more things for parents online. So for those parents who need computer access, we’ve put some computers in the parent center.

The last tactic is about curriculum, and one of the big curriculum changes we’re going to start next year is more heterogeneous grouping for the students. We want to start mixing the kids and putting them into more established teams. The teachers attended training on differentiation and heterogeneous groupings because some of them aren’t used to mixed groups.

As part of this fourth tactic, we also want to do more inquiry and project-based education. For example, say in a history class students are studying Lewis and Clark. Instead of the teacher just talking about the expedition, the students would be engaged in different projects about Lewis and Clark at varying depths depending on their abilities. Right now we have the RAIS program – Rincon Academy of International Studies. It’s part of our GATE program. The students do a personal project of their choice at the end. We had one student do a “fashion of the decades” project. She took aspects from the 20s through the 80s and incorporated them into her own kind of look. Usually only the GATE students have the opportunity to experience these kinds of projects. We want all the students to have this opportunity because it’s good for all kids. With these changes, we won’t have just regular classrooms, we’ll have engaged classrooms.

The feedback I’ve gotten from the people involved in this process has been very high. When each of the tactic teams presented their ideas, the parents on the core team all came back to hear the ideas and say “yay” or “nay” or question them. That part was very powerful. It was nice to see that their work was taken seriously.

The process for me was great. So many people, so many ideas. I loved it. For me, it was like “fair shared management.” I’m the manager and I realize that I’m ultimately responsible, but when everybody sees that their ideas are extremely valuable and are actually implemented, it helps create a culture-sharing school. It’s a win-win situation, and there’s a lot more buy-in for the plan.

I’ve also changed how I work with my staff. For example, we have late starts on Tuesday mornings and usually something is planned for the staff on those days. I took all those things off the table and said we were going to work on strategic planning. The district had given us a deadline, and we were going to meet it. A lot of people said, “No, we can’t deal with that. We can’t do it,” but they did. The staff would go out and do research and then report their findings. I don’t remember the staff ever doing that before. They would do that for their own classrooms, of course, but not for school wide initiatives or programs. So that was a big change. Plus, I wasn’t in a group even though I visited each group every week. The downside was I wasn’t involved in a group, the upside side was I wasn’t involved in a group. So it’s not a plan I came up with – which is huge. But to me, it’s a very positive thing. I’m really proud about the work we’re starting to do right now here at Rincon. And I believe that, as a result, the way we meet in the future will change as well.

It’s been nice to have the Ball Partnership as critical thinking friends. Someone that you can think out loud with and really let your mind go. So many times with the day-to-day business, we get so tied up with what’s happening at that moment, we don’t have time to sit back and reflect. I think that’s one of the things I’ve probably done more of recently than at any other time – to think and reflect on my work, and actually discover things that I would do differently. Normally, I would not have taken the time to think about things, and just kept repeating those things that may or may not have been as useful to do. So for me, going through this work with Ball, I keep getting reminded to stop and think and reflect on what I’m doing and who it effects and if it’s positive, and if it’s getting the results that I want.

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