Department Meeting - Teachers Report Day

Today, we had a department meeting to discuss "increasing attendance, decreasing discipline [problems], and how we are using the methods from The Master Teacher to increase student learning."

Teachers in attendance were myself, Marty, Lesley, and Mia.

Student Attendance

• Create a student forum. We will gather frequently absent students together in the auditorium and hold a town meeting. During this town reason we will inquire what we can do to increase their attendance. If this is not feasible, someone could create a survey and have all students fill it out. After gathering this data, we would address their recommendations.
• Do funner stuff [sic].
• We could start a program like Niagara Falls has. Basically, seniors are given prizes for perfect attendance. As it has been widely recognized that student attendance is a systemic problem with many different root causes, it need be addressed globally.
• Create classroom portals for class news, assignments, handouts, and projects, in order to have a web presence that could be used to keep students up to speed when they are not in the classroom

Discipline

• Discuss the feasibility of allowing teachers to give out detention for disciplinary issues.
  
• Reinstitute hall sweeps, as hallway roaming students are becoming more of a problem

Master Teacher

Classroom Management Techniques that Cut Interruptions
* Category Three Interruptions - To minimalize interruptions about class homework, issues, or other questions that need not be addressed by teachers, teachers have done the following

1. Outlined in procedures that these questions are inappropriate
2. Clearly post instructions and assignments on board (on a pre-assigned area) or classroom blog
3. Post homework on the school website