August 2005 — Features
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Sparking a Revolution in Teaching and Learning
Other staff members played a role in our success that second year: At each school, we appointed a lead teacher who helped manage the implementation, and served as my primary point of contact. These lead teachers made the whole system work; we couldn’t have kept constant tabs on eight elementary schools without them.
Principal participation. The principals became champions as well. Almost all had taken a graduate-level course on becoming instructional leaders in technology. The principals got their own laptops and were trained in their use. With the laptops, the principals were able to use the management system to check the progress of each classroom— a feature they really loved. They would bring their classroom reports to their collaborative planning sessions with teachers, so they had specific guidance on what each class needed. Their participation helped ensure our regular formative assessments had a real, effective impact on classroom instruction.
With all this support and involvement, it was no surprise that every elementary school in our second-year implementation showed significant gains in reading scores, often reaching pass rates of over 80 percent. It was also no surprise that we began to get pressure to extend our technology model to other elementary schools—both from principals and teachers who had heard about what was happening in our EETT schools, and from teachers who were transferred from an implementation school to a nonimplementation school, and couldn’t face going back to their old way of teaching. With the help of special-education funds, Title I monies, and other funding sources, we got Destination Success into all our elementary schools for the 2005-2006 school year.
I have to say, however, that our success g'es far beyond any specific program. I’ve never seen a technology initiative have the effect this one has had. The process of integrating technology has really changed the whole culture of the schools, and the district as well. It’s changed people: I’ve seen teachers who were afraid of technology fall in love with it. They’ve branched out to e-mail, presentation tools, personal Web pages, digital cameras and video, and put it all to work in the classroom. And the same-grade training model has led teachers to form strong bonds for technical (and emotional) support.
In the end, our students (who start life with so many strikes against them) are finding real success with hands-on, active, engaged learning. And isn’t that what the classroom of the future is supposed to look like?
Carole Eaton is a curriculum specialist for instructional technology for the Canton City Schools in Ohio.
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