The summer of preparing for “The Change” began right away!
In early June, my Assistant Principal, Counselor and I spent the first week
sorting students into Houses. This
proved to be more challenging that we ever could have imagined! We first took all of the parent requests for
siblings to be in the same House. As
hard as we tried, we did have a few families that we were not able to
accommodate due to Special Programs or specialized instruction for one or more
of the siblings. However, overall we met
most all of the parent requests. We had
sent a Parent Request Form home with students in May. The request could be made for all siblings to
be in the same House, but parents could not request a specific House
color. We were very excited and happy to
notice that most of our Madeley Ranch families did want their children in the
same house. After sorting through those
request, we had to look at each student's needs, behaviors, learning
modalities, and personalities to match them to the best House, Designer, and
classroom. With the help of our designers
input, the entire process took about a week. Of course, throughout the summer
the lists in each House were tweaked several times before the final rosters
were printed. A lot of time and thought
went into the placement of every Learner.
We wanted the best fit for each one of our kiddos!
Meanwhile, our Maintenance Man was busy moving our designers
all over the building. Before leaving
for the summer, our designers had to pack up their entire classroom. Literally every single designer had to move
over the summer. After mapping out where
each House was to be located, we then had to place designers strategically so
that they were located next to each other in every House. Since our building was built in a more
traditional elementary campus style, this proved to be a little more
challenging than the one we visited in the spring in Coppell ISD. Lee
Elementary was only 3 years old and was designed specifically for this concept. Before finalizing the map, it changed a half
a dozen times if not more! I was so
proud of our designers in the end because they all had such amazing attitudes
about having to move to different classrooms. This required an incredible amount of planning
and patience on everyone’s part. I am so
thankful to have such a flexible staff! Our
Maintenance Man, we so lovingly call Mr. Mikey, had his own plan and procedures
of how the big move would unfold. He had
a great system in place with a thorough plan and well thought out directions
for all designers. He was able to move
everyone by himself in the building within 3 weeks over the summer! I thought this was pretty incredible!
The next step on our to-do list was to create a new Master
Schedule. Since each House consisted of
classrooms of K-5 grades, we had to ensure that our Master Schedule offered the
required minutes of instruction necessary for each grade level in each
House. We also had to build in the
Specials classes rotations and lunch into each House on the Master
Schedule. This was challenging to say
the least! Thank goodness we have an
Instructional Coach who is extremely talented at building Master Schedules, and
an amazing P.E. Designer who is also a wiz at putting together Special’s schedules. Both were time consuming to create. The Master Schedule was a challenge because
we had to incorporate “Team Time” each day.
This was something we had never done before. “Team Time” was built into the Master
Schedule every day to allow grade level planning once every seven days. The House would plan a minimum of once a week
to align curriculum and instruction, but the “Team Time” allowed shared ideas
between designers within their own grade level.
Both planning periods for all of our designers would be crucial for this
concept to be successful. The Special’s
Schedule for each House had to be designed in such a way that our learners were
grouped together age appropriately. Our
largest House had eight classrooms to put into a Special’s rotation adding to
the level of difficulty in designing the schedule. But fortunately, between our Instructional
Coach and our P.E. Designer, they created several schedules before finding the
one that ended up working the best. I
cannot say it enough when I say that I am a blessed leader to be surrounded by
such a talented group of Designers, Coaches and Administrators and Staff! Each played such a huge roll in ensuring this
concept become a success! Little did we
know at the time, but would later realize that the Master Schedule would need
to change again after the school year had begun. Throughout this journey we held tight to a
mantra we created, “We will have lots of bumps come across the road to success,
but each bump will cause us to learn together, grow stronger and fall forward.”
