Organizational structures

AMLE says:

Organizational structures foster purposeful learning and meaningful relationships.
The ways schools organize teachers and group and schedule students have a significant impact on the learning environment. Interdisciplinary teams common planning time, block scheduling, and elimination of tracking are related conditions that contribute to improved achievement.

It means:

Teaming is not just organizational, but how schools can build strong learning communities that are safe and supportive places where teachers and students alike are encouraged to take intellectual risks and feel like they know and can trust one another.  If teaming is effectively implemented, students achieve more, parents stay in contact more, and students and teachers feel, unsurprisingly, more positive about school.  Teams of 2 or 3 teachers are good for this effort.  For effective team planning, teachers need time on a regular basis to plot out how they will integrate the curriculum, analyze data, review work, discuss current research, and reflect.  This is not about small details, but the big picture.  Larger schools may subdivide into smaller groups that are, effectively, microcosms of the entire school population.  At best, middle level teachers design and operate much of the program themselves, collaborate across specialty areas, share responsibility for literacy, advocacy, and student life, and use available resources thoughtfully to work toward success for students.


Example:

Blackhawk Middle School uses small teams of teachers to create a close-knit community for students.  They meet daily to discuss successes and concerns, coordinate curriculum, and to assign work.  This helps students adjust at the middle level before entering high school, develop their strengths, and trust with other students, as well as teachers.  The video highlights one student named Diego, who is engaged with learning and helping others.  The spokesman in the video attributes it in part to the success of the school's teaming, which puts students into several rotations, each focusing on something different, such as literacy or math.



Chapter 3: Blackhawk Middle School Team Teaching from BSD2 Community Relations on Vimeo.

Why it works:

Here, it seems that the school's teaming is not just organizational, with teachers meeting daily and collaborating, as well as focusing on different areas of need.  Teachers seem to be effectively working together to create a positive student environment to maximize the best possible outcome for their students.  As the principal and assistant principal said, teachers support one another to integrate curriculum, assign work without overwhelming the students, and to "share the love."  I don't know if Blackhawk Middle School is larger, but the school also split itself into 2 teams, so that students work closely with the same teachers and develop a sense of trust before delving into high school.

My classroom/school:

My school has regularly scheduled professional development periods for teachers based on whether they teach in a 12:1:1, 8:1:1, or 6:1:1 format, and whether or not their students attend work sites.  Mine do not, as 5/6 are too young, and as 1/6 is "not ready yet" to attend a work site outside of school.  At any rate, it does not have explicit teams.  Over the summer, however, the curriculum planning team, of which I'm a member, worked to create informal teams to share resources, curriculum planning for students of similar abilities and needs, and to foster an ever-more-positive school environment.  As a non-graded, alternate assessment school, tracking and block scheduling are irrelevant, as there are simply classroom teachers and cluster teachers.  Yet, what I can strive to do is to foster more camaraderie among teachers who naturally get along and work together well.  People at my work think I'm smiley and nice all the time, anyway, so I might as well play that card and try to make work happier and more cooperative.