The shooting at Platte Canyon High School yesterday is a sobering reminder that rural schools are not immune from violence. One of the more troubling aspects of the incident is that it appears the killer didn't have any connection to the school.
This is a good time for school administrators to review their emergency preparedness. The U.S. Department of Education's Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools has excellent resources to assist in that task including Practical Information on Crisis Planning: A Guide for Schools and Communities.
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Monday, September 25, 2006
Teacher Recrutment & Support
Mark your calendars to attend my session Twenty Strategies for Hiring and Keeping Effective Teachers at the National Rural Education Association Convention in Kansas City on Tuesday, October 24 at 10 am. Hobart Harmon and I will be discussing strategies that schools are using to hire and keep effective teachers.
This session will go beyond the same old tired strategies that have been reported over and over again. Instead, our focus will be on strategies that aggressive recruiter districts use to find and keep good teachers. Our session won't be very helpful if you're looking for solutions that don't take any effort. But it will be worth your time if you're willing to put forth the energy needed to improve teacher quality and ultimately student outcomes.
To learn more visit the NREA website or contact Hobart or myself.
This session will go beyond the same old tired strategies that have been reported over and over again. Instead, our focus will be on strategies that aggressive recruiter districts use to find and keep good teachers. Our session won't be very helpful if you're looking for solutions that don't take any effort. But it will be worth your time if you're willing to put forth the energy needed to improve teacher quality and ultimately student outcomes.
To learn more visit the NREA website or contact Hobart or myself.
Sunday, September 03, 2006
Football on the Great Plains
It's football season for high schools all across the country. In Colorado the new season provides fresh evidence of continued population loss on the Great Plains, and how rural schools and communities are adapting.
Writing for the Denver Post, Robert Sanchez tells the story of the newly combined Sedgwick County Cougars football team, which is in its first year as an athletic cooperative between Julesburg and Revere High Schools. Reaction to the new arrangement is understandably mixed.
It's hard for people who've never experienced rural schools first-hand to understand the importance of maintaining rural schools and all that comes with any sort of consolidation. For them the school mascot is the hardest animal to kill.
The effect of populations declines can also be seen in the change in distribution of Colorado's rural schools playing 11-man, 8-man, and 6-man football between 2005 and 2006.
Sedgwick County lost its first game 19-16 to Creek Valley High School (Nebraska), which is in it's third year as a consolidated school.
Writing for the Denver Post, Robert Sanchez tells the story of the newly combined Sedgwick County Cougars football team, which is in its first year as an athletic cooperative between Julesburg and Revere High Schools. Reaction to the new arrangement is understandably mixed.
A majority of school board members pushed for the agreement and got the backing of students and their parents.
Without the sports cooperative, they say the two school probably would have lost their football programs, driving yet another stake through the heart of rural America. ...
But allegiances die hard, and several longtime alumni from Julesburg and Revere see the freshly minted agreement as akin to kissing an ugly cousin. ...
"When you discard 100 years of history and tradition, it does get people's attention," Julesburg resident Jim Kontny wrote in a letter to the town's newspaper late last year.
It's hard for people who've never experienced rural schools first-hand to understand the importance of maintaining rural schools and all that comes with any sort of consolidation. For them the school mascot is the hardest animal to kill.
The effect of populations declines can also be seen in the change in distribution of Colorado's rural schools playing 11-man, 8-man, and 6-man football between 2005 and 2006.
1A 11-man (Colorado's smallest classification out of five)
2005: 40
2006: 36
8-man
2005: 38
2006: 49
6-man
2005: 20
2006: 22
Sedgwick County lost its first game 19-16 to Creek Valley High School (Nebraska), which is in it's third year as a consolidated school.
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