All news
School staff work throughout summer to improve education
Posted: 8/19/2009 10:26:18 AM
John Blumer of the Monticello School District gets a
school building wing ready for the next school year.
“What did you do this summer?”
It’s a question asked of many students returning to class, often with answers pertaining to camps or trips. But for teachers and other school staff, a lot of time spent in the summer is still focused on students. Whether it be writing curriculum, going over the past semester or staying current on licensing requirements, many educational workers don’t break from school when school breaks for summer.
Just ask any school custodian. Greg Titus, head custodian/buildings and grounds manager for the Monticello School District, spent the summer months just as he had for the past six years: in school. Every summer he oversees the dismantling, cleaning and reassembly of every classroom in the Monticello school building that houses elementary, middle and high school students.
“I don’t ask anybody here to do anything I wouldn’t do,” Titus said this summer as he walked through a gym getting new paint, a scorer’s table getting repaired, bathrooms getting upgraded and floors being varnished. “I’ve had people ask me, ‘Do you work during the summer’ and I say ‘Oh yeah.’ We do a lot here during the summer. I wish I could more, actually.”
Titus – who is also president of the Monticello Educational Support System union that covers custodians, bus drivers and other support staff – also brings students into the action. Every summer the districts hires a few seasonal workers to help out on the repairs.
Four years ago, when Tessa Cash was a high school sophomore in Monticello, she didn’t really think much about what some school staff members did during the summer. But that summer, and every one since, she’s been working for the Monticello district painting walls, doing light repairs and whatever else she can to help out the school’s full-time custodian staff that works throughout the summer getting the building ready for students who return in September.
“I really didn’t know what went on during the summer until I started working here,” said Cash, now a junior at University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.
Other goings-on during the summer include a bevy of professional development opportunities for educators – lessons and ideas they take back to classrooms. Many teachers licensed before 2004 use the summer to take classes for credit to maintain licensing. Teachers licensed after 2004 are required to develop a professional development plan.
Maureen Schiefelbein, district reading specialist with the Beecher-Dunbar-Pembine School District, participated in a “Comprehensive Literacy Model for School Improvement" institute the district hosted. Fourteen teachers and three instructional aides from the district attended the five-day event as part of the district’s moves to implementing a school-reform project dedicated to increasing student achievement.
“We were all there to support the children in our districts,” Schiefelbein said.
The “Partnerships in Comprehensive Literacy Model” the district is implementing uses literacy as a tool for measuring school improvement in four related areas: student learning, teacher perceptions, school climate, and school processes.
“I can't tell you how empowering it was to see teachers, aides, administrators working together toward an action plan in promoting the highest student achievement,” Schiefelbein added.
Rachel Olson of the Edgar School District has been doing the same thing this summer that she has the last six: directing a summer musical at Edgar High School.
“We don't have an auditorium so the only time the stage in the gym is available is during the summer. We put on a full-scale Broadway musical,” Olson said. “It makes for a short summer break but I do this for the students who love theater.”
Have an interesting summer story for us? Let us know at inprint@weac.org.
