2009 Winter Blog!

School Improvement —Formalizing a Continuous Process

As with many organizations, schools also need to undertake a process by which they identify their successes and take a fresh look at ways to improve their “product” of educating our precious young people. Holy Family Academy operates in an environment that is receptive to academic innovation and as a new school, not mired in “we’ve always done it that way.” At times, though, it is necessary to formalize this process, and currently the Academy is engaged in a formal School Improvement Process.

The process will eventually take about a year of data gathering and analysis, and will involve the input of virtually all the stakeholders of our organization—faculty, staff, members of our parish community, School Board members, and parents of HFCA students. Although often times, these large projects can be looked at with intrepidation, I feel it is a wonderful opportunity to recognize what we do well while giving us an objective system to identify issues or systems that we can strengthen or improve. The process also follows the steps I think are important to implementing new ideas:

• Plan— consider all options, resource needs, possible obstacles, and desired outcomes.
• Do—implement the idea;
• Study-- analyze possible root causes for successes and opportunities for improvement
• Act— evaluate what we need to change, adjust or eliminate to better accomplish our goals.

Our School Improvement Plan will focus on three main areas: school vitality, academic excellence and Catholic Christian identity. The plan will be completed sometime in late spring, but I’d like to share some of the things we’ve identified relative to each of the three categories.

Vitality—While most area Catholic schools are experiencing declining enrollment, Holy Family Academy has grown 30% from 2008 to 2009. Our two-round vision continues with two kindergarten classes and two first grade classes, and we currently educate 111 preschool students. The economic environment presents challenges for our school and our school families. While our tuition is in-line with other Catholic schools we are committed to studying ways to maintain tuition costs. We will also be reviewing our organization, governance and other areas, which impact the advancement of our mission.

Academic Excellence—We continue to focus on building 21st Century skills with inquiry learning and differentiated instruction. Critical thinking and problem solving skills begin in our kindergarten classes and continue through 8th grade. Our middle school students use a Web 2.0 social networking platform, blogs, wikis, email and a facebook-like component in their studies. All classes from kindergarten through 8th grade have technology embedded within each curriculum. Of course, academic excellence can only be possible with our exceptional teachers who are committed to our mission of creating the environment where our students become leaders, thinkers, and people of faith.

The rate of change in educational resources calls us to continually review and update curriculum and instruction. Web-lessons are being used to differentiate learning styles and new tools are also being analyzed along with professional development for our teachers.

Catholic Christian Identity—Our faith is a major component of our mission, and our faith is best seen through our actions. Our students embrace efforts that clearly reflect that they are the hands and feet of Jesus. Over the last couple of months we’ve seen student-initiated outreach efforts to save the rainforest, the Scavenger Hunt for the Hungry, and the NIKE Human Race. Most recently we saw every student’s participation in creating and performing a jingle to help inform and educate African students about the importance of bed nets. Check out our first Youtube video at www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1di_PDN1VQ. Our challenge is to help each student develop his or her potential for conscious, responsible living, healthy relationships and leadership.

This gives you a flavor of the School Improvement Process. Perhaps Stephen Covey best summarizes our process in his bestselling book The 8th Habit, —

We must think anew. We must develop not only a new mind-set,
but also a new skill-set and a new tool-set that flows from it.

I will be excited to share the results of this endeavor with you upon its completion in Spring 2010. In the meantime, please let me know what you think of engaging in this vital process of improvement.

2009 Summer Blog Post!

If you are like me, I look forward to the long days of

summer to catch up on my reading. I enjoy all types of

genre and particularly love to share “good reads” with my

friends and colleagues.

I would like to pass along a book that I highly recommend

entitled, DISRUPTING CLASS--How Disruptive

Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns, by

Clayton M. Christensen. I’ve actually had this book in my

personal library since it was released in 2008. I was

delighted to see that it was included in the July 13, 2009

issue of TIME Magazine in an article entitled, “Fifty Books

that Make Sense of Our Times,” and I highly encourage all

people interested in the future of education to read it.

Those of you in business may recognize author Clayton

Christensen for his best selling book The Innovator’s

Dilemma which transformed the way business looks at

innovation. In this book, Christensen, a Professor of

Business at Harvard, applies his theory of disruptive

innovation to education. The key premise of DISRUPTING

CLASS is that our schools need to customize education to

match the way each child learns best. In other words, our

schools’ focus on standardization of teaching methods

(commonly, a teacher lecturing and all students using the

same book) has limited the potential of many of our

students to learn. Christensen contends that improving

education therefore calls for a movement away from

standardization and the movement toward a student-centric

approach through the use of technology.

Christensen points out that schools have for many years

added computers and, most recently “smart boards” to their

classrooms, but this “cramming new technologies into

existing structures” is not the answer. Rather, technology

must be used to address different learning styles and be

used in “project based” or inquiry learning. Moving to a

student-centric approach to education is “disruptive”

because a totally new model of education results.

This is such an exciting time in education! I’m proud that

the hallmarks of our curriculum at Holy Family Academy

include differentiated instruction and inquiry learning.

Our teachers are skilled at adjusting the curriculum to the

learners rather than expecting the students to modify

themselves to the curriculum. Our Web 2.0 lessons (see

my Spring entry) used technology to teach and connect

students 25 miles away.

I encourage you to read DISRUPTING CLASS then re-visit

our school website. I think you’ll find “disruption” in

progress!

Have a great summer!

Dr. Gretchen Ludwig

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2009 Spring Blog Post!

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