Stepping Outside Your Comfort Zone Lessons for School Leaders by Beaudoin Nelson;

Author:Beaudoin, Nelson; [Beaudoin, Nelson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2013-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Magical Microwaves

DOI: 10.4324/9781315854175-19

Convince Students That You Will Listen

As part of our Comprehensive School Reform grant at Leavitt Area High School, we replaced our traditional homeroom period with an advisory program. Teachers and staff felt that the homeroom program was not really helping our students. Groups were large and impersonal, and teachers had time for little more than taking attendance and presenting daily announcements. The advisory program held much more promise. It was intended to help faculty and staff personalize our school by getting to know our students well. We felt that a period of daily contact with a group of twelve to thirteen students, in which we focused on academic and personal planning, would reduce the number of students who felt alienated upon graduating from our school. The advisory program had a fairly detailed curriculum, which included the idea that these daily meetings would enable our students to express their thoughts and feelings about school issues. In short, we were saying that advisory was a vehicle that could be used to empower student voices. The concept of student voice had been introduced to students and heavily promoted, but there was little evidence that the students trusted that adults would ever listen to them.

One of our October advisory agendas was to have teachers facilitate a group discussion on school issues. During this twenty-minute activity, I walked around the school peeking into advisory groups. I noticed various levels of compliance with the planned activity. Some groups seemed to be in the midst of a passionate debate over a pertinent topic, whereas others were marginally involved or simply not participating. There were a number of students whose eyes looked glazed, as if to say, “This is such a waste of time. Nothing we say will make a difference.”

Later that same day, a teacher was in the main office on routine business, and we struck up a casual conversation. As we drifted to the topic of advisory, he mentioned that his students were really worked-up during their morning meeting. I knew that he had a particularly challenging group, and I nodded in acknowledgment that the activity must have been difficult for him. Eventually we talked about the main concern for this particular group of students. It seemed that they were very frustrated by the lack of student accessibility to a microwave oven during lunch. Some students were able to negotiate the use of an oven through the kitchen staff or a teacher, but for the most part students were not able to count on this convenience every day.

As this conversation continued, I found myself switching my attention away from what the teacher had experienced with his group of frustrated students to the obvious question: Why didn't our students have access to a microwave? In a matter of minutes, the plan of action was clear. I envisioned that the desired outcome was going to have far-reaching implications.

I planned to purchase two microwaves and have them set up in the cafeteria for lunch the next day.

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