Module Six--Community Involvement (Heather Summers)

I'm very familiar with the interaction between teacher leaders and the community. As mentioned in the module, my school is an Innovation Zone. We wrote a grant and asked for waivers from WVDE to do our Freshmen Academy, which combines Algebra I and Science 9 into one class and English 9 and World History into one class.

In order for our Innovation Zone to be successful, we had to have a Parent Night, which walked the parents through a normal day of classes for their student and explained to them the concepts and ideas that motivated this change. Moreover, the Freshmen Academy classes bring people from the community in to talk about relevent and related topics that are being learned. For example, students had to create roller coasters that demonstrated Newton's three laws, as well as show calculations and formulas that were used to determine the speed and velocity of the roller coaster. For this project, a member from the community, who had worked on roller coasters before, came in and talked about his job and answered any questions the student had.

Also, we often invite community members to come in and judge projects that students have created at the end of a certain topic. It was our teacher leaders that put together a Parent Night, got together with community businesses and members, and tried to get knowledge out there of this new change for incoming Freshmen. They have put in long hours to try to make this successful, and the first year was the roughest, because a lot of parents still was hesitant and unsure. However, our teacher leaders did everything they could to encourage parents to allow their students to succeed in a real-world classroom.

It is absolutely neccessary to have community involvement in schools. They are the people that push for change and improvements in the school to the ones who can make it happen. Sometimes, the people in charge don't listen to teachers. Sometimes, it has to come from community members, which makes it essential to keep people in "the know" of what's going on in the school.