Captain's Log Day 6 “Final Evidence of PLCs, Department and Faculty Meetings”

Sunday October 16, 2016 Approximately 1700 Hours

My final investigation brings me to the collaboration heavy topics of professional learning communities, department meeting and faculty meetings.  Professional learning communities occur almost every other Wednesday during afternoon professional development or morning professional development.  These meetings are mostly unofficial and not documented or recorded but are very helpful in allowing fellow teachers to discuss student concerns and strategies.  Department meetings are non-existent in our district, but due to curriculum revisions, there has been one department meeting this year.  Last year there were none.  The high school does have faculty meetings each month.  The September faculty meeting did have a sign-in sheet and one teacher was in charge of taking notes that were forwarded to everyone the next day.  It focused mainly on SGOs and the timeline for handing them in properly.  Discipline, which is usually an issue, was also discussed and reinforced. 

Signing off from the USS Keansburg,

Captain Lorusso

Captain's Log Day 5 “Philosophy is Everywhere”

Sunday October 16, 2016 Approximately 1600 Hours

This part of my search was by far the easiest.  The Keansburg school district has done a great job making sure anyone and everyone can see the school philosophy.  On our district’s web page the philosophy can be found by going to “Our District” and then clicking “District Statements”.  I have attached a screenshot of this page below to show all of the different things that can be found.  These include the mission/vision statement, belief statement, beliefs, and a district narrative.  The district philosophy can be seen in many other places.  Below you can see an image of the backside of each teacher’s id badge.  A more compact version of the district philosophy is there.  It can also be found in the 2016-17 student handbook on the front page and the elongated version inside the handbook.  It states that it was updated in 2015 and will mostly likely need to be updated again due to many administration changes in the district.

Signing off from the USS Keansburg,

Captain Lorusso

Captain's Log Day 4 “Program Offerings to the Crew”

Friday October 14, 2016 Approximately 1230 Hours

In order to find my next objective, I needed to take a trip to the guidance department in my school.  For some reason, my high school does not publicly display our program offerings or programs of study.  After searching on the school website and not being able to find them, I thought to myself that I know guidance has these documents.  I knew this because at the end of the school year last year, guidance needed to come into my class and meet with each student after letting the students choose their classes for the following year.  I remembered seeing this document and needed to ask the guidance counselors where it could be found.  They told me it is not online because it changes almost every year and is specific to certain grade levels.  From these findings I can conclude that these documents are updated every year and only used when students are required to choose classes for the following year with their guidance counselor.

Signing off from the USS Keansburg,

Captain Lorusso