Promising+Future+01

Abstract
toc Promising Futures: A Call to Improving Learning for Maine’s Secondary Students is a report written in 1998 to discuss the way Maine high schools meet the educational and developmental needs of their students. The report offers a series of core principles (6) and core practices (15) that act as suggestions for [|Maine high schools] to follow to promote effective learning in a positive environment. These suggestions were developed based on a thorough study of the nature of high schools at the time, examining their general environment, quality of instruction and attention to the student as a whole person.

Here are the six Core Principles: 1. High schools should provide a [|positive and safe environment] for all students to ensure that they are learning. 2. Faculty and staff should have high expectations for ALL students. 3. Student learning should be assessed frequently to recognize changes that must be made to instruction. 4. Teachers must choose methods of instruction that honor and build upon the unique contributions and needs of each learner. 5. Staff, parents, and especially students to be engaged democratically in decisions about learning and the conduct of the school. 6. Learning goals are achieved through the collaboration of the community (parents, students, teachers, administration).

Now, on to the Core Practices: 1. Every student is to be respected and valued by adults and fellow students. 2. Learning should be tailored to the students' interests and needs. 3. Learning should integrate all disciplines more often instead of keeping them completely separate (Rachel F.) 4. Students collaborate to learn from one another, taking into consideration different[| learning styles], backgrounds and skills. 5. "Every student makes informed choices about education and participation in school life and takes responsibility for the consequences of those choices." 6. Students should outline their own goals and how they will achieve them. 7. Teachers keep students and parents informed in the learning process, collaborating to achieve classroom goals. 8. Students who graduate will be prepared for life after high school, knowing specific skills to help them become independent citizens. 9. Teachers and students belong to teams that work together to support intellectual and personal development of the students. 10. How a student is learning should determine how much time is spent on subject, the space in which they learn and the kind of services provided to them. 11. Teachers get enough time to work plan instruction with parents, students and colleagues. 12. Staff members understand developmental needs of students. 13. All schools have outlined clear goals for improving student learning. 14. Students, parents and teachers are ALL involved in student learning. 15. Principals should be active leaders, encouraging students and teachers alike.

Reflection
The prologue of the article hit home with many of us, as it is a story that allows us to relate to our own high school experiences. “Forty-five minute classes are a joke,” says Cara, explaining how it was nearly impossible to accomplish any work in that short period of time. Sometimes it can take a while to get a class started and when an activity is finally in motion, you realize you have run out of time. This is why so many of us loved Core Practice 10, explaining the importance of adequate time spent on instruction. If a student needs more time to spend on a specific activity, we should not just ignore this need, but make adjustments for it. This is easier said than done, but with the right management skills and collaboration with colleagues and administrators, it can be done.

In regards to the same core practice, a few of us talked about how wrong it is that study halls are said to be “phased out” because the report claims that they don't involve any kind of teacher-student interactive learning. We recognize the problem that many students do not have time to finish work at home because of prior commitments or work, so the solution to this problem is to give students a free period to work on their assignments. Another solution is to set aside time in class for students to finish work, or to create classroom instruction and activities that do not require homework outside of class.

One thing that we all agreed on was the fact that this article is grossly outdated. We need to keep updating these studies and integrating new practices in our classroom that we know will be effective, not simply regurgitating old information. Marcy cannot help but wonder what the report would conclude if “information was collected today from the schools in Maine.” One thing to keep in mind as we move into our own classrooms is that this study is something that we should be doing constantly, even independently. We need to be keeping an eye out for practices that enhance learning and engage students. We have all reflected on how these practices can be used in our own classroom- using individualized plans for students to outline their goals, using differentiated instruction and giving students enough time to finish work are all examples of this.

Rachel Fritschy
The first part about this entire report that I loved were the core principles for secondary education. As this report states, "they guide our work by identifying ideals for which to strive in our teaching, parenting, and planning." The very first principle is to have a safe, respectful, and caring environment. I definitely agree with this fully because how can a student learn in an environment that he or she does not feel safe in? I know that I felt very safe in my school so I was able to focus and learn as much as possible but in more unstable schools, teachers and administrators should do whatever they can to create a safer, comfortable environment for the students. The next principle says that a school should have high expectations with multiples opportunities to learn. This is so important in a classroom because if you don't set the bar high for your students, then how can you expect them to even try. Also, the only want to allow every student to achieve has much as they can is to give them as many opportunities as you can to learn. The fourth principle emphasizes teacher's building their teaching techniques off of students' needs. I completely agree with this because teaching and learning is always about the students, never the teacher. The last principle was to have coherence among the goals, missions, and outcomes because it is incredibly important to make sure everything falls together. If you send students mixed messages about what you want from them, they won't do what you want because they don't know what you want exactly. Giving them a path that is clear and coherent is the way to go. The report later discusses "core practices" that are meant to be adopted by as many Maine schools as possible in order to help students achieve even more. The very first core practice is that every student is to be respected and valued by adults and fellow students. The role of an adult in a teenagers life is to guide them to making the right decisions for themselves. When teenagers do not feel respected by their teachers, they will not offer respect for their teachers. The second core practice is all about tailoring the learning completely to the students' interests and needs. We have learned so many times about how important it is that we tailor our lesson plans to our students' learning styles and interests because this is how we will get through to them. Have you ever tried to explain a concept to someone or show someone how to do something they've never done before without using some sort of metaphor? It's almost impossible because if it's something completely new to them, they have absolutely no basis for comparison. By connecting to their interests, I know that they will be more engaging and more willing to learn. I love core practice number three because it emphasizes how we need to intermingle the disciplines more often instead of keeping them completely separate. By doing so, students can see a connection between everything they are learning and their real lives much more concisely. "Every student makes informed choices about education and participation in school life and takes responsibility for the consequences of those choices." This quote is core practice number five and could not be more perfect for my teaching mentality. I knew from very early on that I wanted to teach middle/high school rather than elementary or even younger because I want to deal with kids that are more mature and older. I want to teach kids to stand on their own two feet and be independent citizens of this country. So many students today are being spoon fed by their parents and teachers so that when they enter the real world, they are so unprepared and can't do anything for themselves. This is extremely unacceptable in my book and I intend on giving my students full responsibility to their actions. The "to be phased out" section was definitely a little humorous to me because it outlines some aspects of schools that really should be phased out at some point. One was the assignment of teachers to huge classes of students. I know that in many school districts, class size cannot be helped because funds are limited so teachers are limited and students are surplus. Also, study halls are said to be phased out because they don't involve any kind of teacher-student interactive learning. I disagree with this because some students do not have much time at home to do work due to extra work or family problems so giving them a time when they can do work is a great thing. Maybe we don't have to make that time an entire block of time but it definitely needs to be incorporated. Overall I thought this report was very informative and definitely opened my eyes up to some new concepts to think about as a future teacher. The only downfall to this kind of report is that it needs to be updated often and this one is over 12 years old so it definitely needs to be redone or updated.

Jay Allshouse
//Promsing Futures: A Call to Improving Learning for Maine’s Secondary Students// is a comprehensive report put together by the Department of Education and the Maine Commission on Secondary Education; the report itself was completed in September 1998, and its overarching goals were to do a comprehensive review, for the first time, of Maine high schools; to find areas in which the schools were doing well and find areas in which they were doing poorly; they would then take that information and put it into 6 core principles and 15 core practices that would aim to strengthen and improve all Maine high schools. The report does specify, a number of times that these are suggestions to improve the schools in Maine, and that they do not mean for all of these things to be forced upon schools. They are arguing that schools should want to make these changes on their own in order to improve the learning off all the students involved. The Core Principles of the Commission are as follows: 1) A safe, respectful, and caring environment that assures that every student can attend fully to her or his central mission: learning. 2) Adults to hold high universal expectations of all students. 3) Frequent assessment of student learning and reviews of these assessments among students, teachers, and parents so that all can share responsibility for planning and carrying out learning activities. 4) Teaching and procedures that honor and build upon the unique contributions and needs of each learner. 5) Staff, parents, and especially students to be engaged democratically in decisions about learning and the conduct of the school. 6) Internal coherence among school mission, goals, actions, and outcomes so that the efforts of students, staff and community result in the fulfillment of mission and goals. These are all pretty common sense things to focus on, but they should not be ignored in anyway because of how obvious they are. It is very important for students to have a safe environment to foster learning; it is also necessary that students, teachers, and parents have high expectations because if they do not then no one will want to be the best. I completely agree that the whole community should have a say in what happens in the schools, and once there is some common ground, you can then work on making sure that there is the coherence to make the school run smoothly. The big topic here, in the Core Practices section, is the Commission’s idea that learning should be done by individualized plans in which every student has. These plans are meant to outline what the student knows, what he or she should know by graduation, and the many ways in which you are going to achieve those goals. It is essentially a call to create IEPs for every student and tailor them so that we can meet the individual goals of each learner. The Commission also calls for schools to have students produce portfolios to show that they have mastered all of the skills necessary to be successful and meet the Maine Learning Results. There were some suggestions that I really liked such as the need for individualized plans for teachers to help them improve, stay motivated and on top of their game as educators; I also liked how they called for principles to step up and take command of the schools so that they could be the driving force behind the revolution; and the final one that really stood out was the call for an increase in planning time so that students and teachers could have more opportunity to be on the same page and to craft some really good, inspiring lesson plans. Many of the ideas made in this plan may not be used in schools right now, but I can tell you that they will be soon. Almost all of the information and suggestions in this document is being taught to us right now. We definitely talk about content integration, the need for strong planning, backwards design, tailoring lessons to meet the needs of individual students, along with the need to communicate effectively so that students know exactly what is expected of them and how they are expected to reach those goals both throughout the year and in individual assignments. Most importantly, and the subject that almost all of use brings up, is the idea that we need to craft a safe, fun, and comfortable work environment for our students so that they can succeed in life and become functioning members of society. I think that every school should implement these changes; I am not quite sure how feasible they really are (such as the individualized plans), but they should be done if it is possible. I hope that we can grow and learn from this report, because of all its insightful information, or else our schools here in Maine will suffer.

Rachel Lamblin
A Commission was created in Maine in 1997 to examine the state of education in Maine and make recommendations to improve it. From this commission came a report: “Promising Future: A Call to Improve Learning for Maine's Secondary Students.” Its goal was to meet the standards for education while fostering creativity and forward thinking in students and in schools so that all students would leave school “prepared for his or her own promising future.” Eight main observances were recorded, which included graduation rates, student need, and academic achievement. Each observance was followed by a challenge that broadly suggested how each observance could be improved. The document then presented a set of Core Principles that schools could use as an outline for the improvement of school climate and educational outcomes. The 15 Core Practices suggested ways to improve student learning. The document then outlines seven desired outcomes within schools. I believe that the individuals who made up the commission have a good handle on what schools should be like. While they strive to meet the Maine Learning Results, they also acknowledge that no two students learn alike and that students can learn the same material in different ways. They also stress an importance for the students to have a real life connection in the classroom and for authentic assessment. The values and outcomes outlined in this document in some ways reflect what I have learned in practicum. The idea of multiple intelligences is incorporated in the Core Principles and the backward design model is supported throughout the report. I also like that this document is written in real language and is easy to read. I am wondering if this has been circulated to schools statewide. Is there incentive to meet the outcomes and adopt the Core Principles of “Promising Futures”? More should be done to facilitate these improvements within every school district.