Renew Steller has moved on

RenewSteller has run its course and become part of the Steller Strategic Planning Committee. We'll have updates at http://www.stellerschool712.org Thanks for participating!

Blog on hiatus

The RenewSteller blog will be on haitus until school starts in the fall. If you have an issue or want to comment on something, please email Charles or Robin.

Working together

Around 45 Steller community members attended the meeting last night (Apr 26) and spent two hours planning our future in the areas of Advisory Groups, Orientation, and Staff Training and Support. It was a gorgeous sunny evening and the mood was relaxed and positive. Groups worked collaboratively and came up with some great ideas and exciting directions forward.

After hearing an introduction and background powerpoint talk by Karin, we broke up into three groups in three rooms, each with staff, parent and student leaders. The groups identified the ideal outcomes we want in these subject areas, then talked about strategies to get there. Butcher paper notes will be typed by the group leaders and posted here on the site. More importantly, they will used with ongoing work to reimagine and reform our practices at Steller in these critical areas.

Next steps will continue on two levels.

First, the groups and forums where work is already happening will take our input from last night. David Breen is leading a group of students working on orientation. Staff and students are working on reinvigorating and redirecting our use of Advisory Groups; that will continue, and work will begin on creating a binder containing norms and support materials for staff members running the groups. Karin is leading the staff training track.

Second, we will continue this process. Parents have discussed the idea of having four all-community meetings next year, continuing this discussion in small groups each evening. Rather than breaking up into committees, we would keep working on a basis in which everyone is welcome and can plug in at any step. The purpose will be to keep the Strategic Plan and RenewSteller energy going in tandem to develop and support our school.

Check back for the typed up meeting notes as soon as the group leaders get that done.

Finally, thanks to all who attended and led the groups, and especially to Karin Parker for her leadership and flexibility.

Karin pushes issues forward

Steller Principal Karin Parker has called a meeting Thursday, April 26, at 6:30pm to begin implimenting the ideas developed by RenewSteller and Steller's stragetic plan. We will be meeting to prepare on Monday, April 23, at 3:30pm.The agenda, as Karin explained in her recent Steller Yeller article, focuses on three major themes: orientation, staff development and counseling groups. Each of these theme areas has a lot of individual tasks attached to it. For example, the staff has been working on the counseling group area, which includes academics, service, discussion of issues, bonding, representation, and student leadership. Each of those topics involves various initiatives. We hope enough people will attend the meeting so that we can break into groups to work on the sub-issues. Karin has also been working with a group of students who are interested in being involved.I've met several times with Karin to work on setting up these meetings, and I'm really excited about her leadership. Karin is trying to bring the school community together to work on the goals that we've raised. Her agenda is ambitious and it will take the support of the whole school community to make it happen.Leaders are needed. Those who can help can please contact me or Karin. The April 23rd meeting will be the chance to agree on how we go forward, and the April 27 meeting is to start making things happen.

Woah. I thought that this paper was just some suggestions to help Steller to its feet. These people were not trying to push their opinions on the community and Steller doesn't have to go through with all that was suggested. People shouldn't have to defend their "side" like an argument. More understanding from the rest of the community would help move this along. Then everyone as a whole can decide what 's going to end up happening to our school.
Jordyn for Jordyn

Choosing our next step

To keep the wonderful energy and momentum going from our last big meeting, it is time to choose some priorities for the Renew Steller project. As we've done all along, this is a voluntary process--we're just working together as members of the school community. We've already accomplished a lot on that basis.

There's a strong concensus behind the desire to make Steller even better by renewing our practices to more clearly reflect our shared philosophy. In addition, we have strong administrative support. Gary and I met with Superintendent Carol Comeau recently. She gave us more than an hour, and her energy level and enthusiasm for the open optional concept at Steller was almost overwhelming. She's definitely ready to help.

Here are some issues that I pulled from the Jan. 31 meeting notes and discussion that grew out of them. I welcome others to add more-- the notes are all found here. Maybe we can't work on all of these at once, but we can address a number of them through the different forums we have-- including the Op Group, Ad Board, Parent Group and the Strategic Plan Committee (which is meeting Thursday evening). Other items will best be handled by staff and the administration with parent support. Anyway, let's start talking about what to tackle and how to do it.

These 10 issues/ideas are in no particular order.

1. Continuous orientation, not just at the start of 7th grade (Karin Parker's idea).
2. Teacher professional development in open optional practices; a credit class for staff could be offered by ASD, to be taught by retired Steller experts (Carol Comeau's idea).
3. SDL/Independent study encouraged, redefined and unified as a core of the Steller experience, with core academic credit given.
4. Teacher recruitment and a standing committee for hiring.
5. Renewed emphasis on student recruitment and admissions.
6. Support for seminar, with greater integration throughout the curriculum; creation of a "seminar team" of trained parents and students to support teachers.
7. Renewed emphasis on counseling groups, making sure all are serving students well, and branching out into more educational and social directions (Barbara Wohlforth's write-up).
8. Strengthening the togetherness of the school community with more family involvement and fun events (See Barbara's concept).
9. Additional support for student leadership, such as academic credit for taking leadership roles.
10. A less structured school day: integrated content, non-traditional time blocks, outcome-based instead of seat time.

It's easy to leave comments here. Soon, we'll be putting together a meeting to start dividing up jobs. Please weigh in now on how we should do this, and what priorities excite you.

Ideas for counseling groups

Look at this article about counseling (or advisory) groups at Essential schools, which I found on the net. (It is posted on the "Ideas and Documents" page.) It is long, but skim to see if it spurs ideas. It would be a good start for the "what are counseling groups for" conversation that needs to happen. My ah-ha favorite part is: "In fact, some of the best advisory group discussions start with historical, literary, or scientific situations that pose compelling moral dilemmas. In her 1984 book Making Decisions, from which several exercises are reproduced here, Nancy Faust Sizer sets out such cases in 26 pairs --one drawn from students' own environment, one from the world at large to encourage analytical thinking and moral reasoning. Emphasizing respect for the reasoning process over the actual outcome of the decision, she argues, allows students to 'compare, dissect, resolve' their common and individual principles." Wow, can you imagine turning CG into arenas for socratic discussion and exploration of real world stuff? I picture a viewing of "Inconvenient Truth" and resulting discussion - powerful way for kids to develop interests. Also, I like the idea that kids could do valuable learning without it being a formal class with evaluation and homework.