SCENE SEVEN
PLAINTIFF LAWYER
Teacher Tom, I believe that you were a new teacher member of the Shared Planning Team?
TEACHER TOM
Yes, this is my second year on the faculty and Principal Lipservice suggested that I volunteer to be a member.
PLAINTIFF LAWYER
Volunteer?
TEACHER TOM
Well, I took what he said to mean that I should volunteer.
PLAINTIFF LAWYER
‘Should’ as in it was in your best interest?
TEACHER TOM
Well yes, after all I am a non-tenured teacher in the building and while we are actually chosen by our teacher’s union to volunteer for any school committees, my building rep certainly had no problem with my being a volunteer.
PLAINTIFF LAWYER
Describe how you began your participation in the team.
TEACHER TOM
Well it was pretty much as Parent Pat described it. We got some training, a pep talk from the Superintendent, and began to have meetings.
PLAINTIFF LAWYER
Were you witness to how Principal Lipservice participated?
TEACHER TOM
Also pretty much as Parent Pat described it. I took from most of his conversation that he would rather have been somewhere else.
DEFENSE LAWYER
Your Honor, I object. This man is neither a mind reader nor a psychologist.
JUDGE
Yes. Plaintiff Lawyer, take note of my sustaining the objection.
PLAINTIFF LAWYER
Yes, Your Honor. Teacher Tom, was it part of your responsibility to communicate the actions and thinking of the team to your colleagues?
TEACHER TOM
Yes, it was.
PLAINTIFF LAWYER
How did that go?
TEACHER TOM
Principal Lipservice runs monthly faculty meetings. A good bit of the meeting is procedural issues, upcoming dates, news to share, and the like. Sometimes he will have a guest speaker or a faculty member will present some professional development material.
PLAINTIFF LAWYER
Did you have a role in these meetings?
TEACHER TOM
Well, I was supposed to communicate what the team was working on and what actions it agreed to. We have had six meetings this year and four times, when we got to my spot on the agenda, the principal either skipped over me or gave me very little time to inform the faculty.
PLAINTIFF LAWYER
Were there any negative results from this?
TEACHER TOM
For one thing, it made it difficult for me to get any input from my colleagues that I could carry back to the group to help me represent their thinking.
PLAINTIFF LAWYER
Can you give me one example?
TEACHER TOM
We began to consider a homework policy after we had seen the achievement data problems. We thought that maybe a root cause for this was that the actual teaching time in the day was too fragmented and interrupted. We knew we couldn’t extend the school day but we thought maybe having some kind of set expectation for homework might compensate.
I knew that there were many who would either object to or have ideas about the best way to have an effective policy or whether we thought we should have such a policy in the first place. But since I was not able to have the time to get a discussion going in faculty meetings, I was really obstructed in involving my colleagues’ input. I tried other ways like memos, faculty room conversations, and the like but I really felt hampered by my inability to speak at the faculty meetings.
PLAINTIFF LAWYER
Thank you Teacher Tom. (to Defense Lawyer) your witness.
Teacher Tom’s testimony speaks to the third major variable of an effective, highly- involved, shared decision-making/planning/school improvement team—INFORMATION.
INFORMATION as Wohlstetter describes it, actually has two components. The first would be access to data to inform the group’s thinking and action planning. The second component within this variable is input. This speaks to the obligation of the team’s members to inform their constituents of what the group is considering. Clearly, to ignore or to deny input from those who are not actually team members but who would be clearly involved, affected by, or responsible for what the group might agree to do, mocks the idea of any sort of meaningful collaboration and defeats the good will and hard work of all.
~Richard Bernato, Ed.D.