Regular readers will know that I once founded a school, and when doing so, I made a program decision that Preschool and Elementary teachers would be generalists, ie they would teach all the core subjects, and that Middle and High School teachers would be specialists, ie they would teach one or two subjects only. I also implemented an Elementary program where the core subjects were all integrated, and "science" or "geography" as such did not exist. Things went well, very well in fact.
The school won a number of local, regional and national academic awards. In particular, we won the Regional Science Fair competition three years in a row, and regional "Science Teacher of the Year" twice.
After around ten years, I left the school, partly for a new challenge and partly because of a particularly problematic new board chair. One of the issues was that he was a self-annointed expert in all things educational, and would often tell me that which became somewaht tiresome.
The year following my departure and in the absence or a new principal, the school announced it was opening a "Science Lab". Which it did, after doing whatever they did over the summer and spending whatever they spent. Coincidentally, they also defaulted on two loan repayments, reversed the annual teacher salary increase and abandoned the salary scale which has still not been replaced.
The predictable has happened. Science is no longer integrated into the program. Experiments, the scientific method and laboratory practise no longer appear in elementary classrooms. Science now belongs "in the lab".
The total of regional Science Fair prizes in the years since the lab installation is less than that of any of the previous three years. The three teachers who brought inventive and innovative scientific approaches, activities and experiments to planning meetings have all departed for other schools. Bean sprouts no longer appear on classroom window ledges.
So what went wrong? The Board did not do its job in reining in the chair, and in keeping out of program matters. The Board Chair did not do his job in keeping out of program and in enforcing his, wrong, opinion-based mandate. And Science was removed from being an everyday and integral part of the school's teaching and learning.
That Chair was pushed out at the end of the year for other reasons, but this particular problem (and the effective faculty salary cuts) remains and incidentally, the school has not won another local, regional or national award.
**Questions or comments below. Let me know what you think.**
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