Hello Jackie,
At the Adult Learning Center the teachers are full time and still have
shared planning time on Friday afternoons at 400 38th street. They are
under union contract and must receive a certain number of preps per week
and all I did was change their schedule to have a common planning
period. The teachers' initial response was positive because they liked
the idea of a common prep on Fridays. In the evening program at 318 -
18th street all teachers get paid for 1/2 hour common planning time /
student counseling as well in which teachers can discuss individual
student needs and assist students via appointments for life/career
skills. In the evening program the staff was pleased because it gave
them time to plan together. Both programs are covered by grant money
that did not involve the UPS/EFF funding. Using the EFF process of
program improvement gave me the ideas to allow my staff to work
collaboratively. The teachers handed in a questionnaire without having
to put their names on it to share their opinions about the changes in
the program and luckily they were all positive and they found it
beneficial to the program improvement process as well as their own
professional 
well-being. I did use the EFF/UPS funding to pay interested staff
members to rewrite our outdated curriculum based on the EFF standards.

My recommendation for program directors who are considering 
a change in teacher scheduling to include shared plan time is try your
best to do it. I realized that when we encourage teachers to share ideas
great things happen.

Sincerely,
esmeralda

-----Original Message-----
From: programleadership-bounces at nifl.gov
[mailto:programleadership-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of jataylor
Sent: Monday, May 08, 2006 7:37 PM
To: programleadership at nifl.gov
Subject: [ProgramLeadership 54] Shared plan time for teachers

Hello Esmerelda,
Thank you for joining us to share your experiences with program
improvement. I 
have a few questions for you pertaining to how you structured your
program 
such that your teachers had (still have?) shared planning time once a
week. 
Would you tell us more about how you made that work?

For example:
1) Are your teachers primarily part time? At the same location?
Different 
locations?
2) What was their initial response to this change in their schedules?
3) Were they paid to participate in shared plan time? If so, then was
this 
financially supported as a part of the EFF/UPS project, or have they 
traditionally been receiving paid plan time?
4) What was their assessment of having this shared plan time? Did they
find it 
beneficial to the program improvement process? For their own
professional 
well-being?
5) Do they still have shared plan time now that the EFF/UPS project is
over?
6) What recommendations do you have for program directors who are
considering 
a change in teacher scheduling to include shared plan time?

Thanks for your thoughts, Jackie

Jackie Taylor, Moderator
Adult Literacy Professional Development Discussion List
jataylor at utk.edu

<snip>
http://pli.cls.utk.edu/Stories/story4.html
"As the team leader and administrator of the Adult Learning Center, I
knew I 
needed to have teachers on the advisory board in order for them to buy
into 
any changes that would be implemented within our program. The first
change 
that was implemented that came from one of our meetings was to change
the 
teachers' schedules so that they would have a common prep period every
Friday 
to meet and share their ideas on how to infuse the EFF standards into
their 
everyday lesson plans. Inviting the principal of Adult Education Mr.
Cordero 
to our advisory board meetings assisted in allowing this change to
happen."

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