I would like to speak to the issue of departmentalization regarding
specials. This year, I am one of the specials, as I am teaching Art to
Kindergarten, First, and Second grades in three schools. I can tell you
first hand that scheduling my art classes was an absolute nightmare for
some classes. Which classes, you ask? Why, the classes that were
departmentalizing. I actually had a teacher say to me, in a tone you
don't want to ever hear coming from a colleague, "I am NOT giving up
ANY of my reading time so I am picking my kids up 15 minutes early."
And she does. And you know what? Her students do not get the same depth
of instruction as every other art student in the entire district,
because I am always rushed and turn out rushing them to finish what
they are doing, and they never, ever, ever have time to reflect on
their art work. Ever. At another school, the departmentalized teachers
took one look at my time slots and said, "Not to start out on a bad
note, but none of these times work for us, because we switch kids."
Add that to the fact that departmentalized teaching is done for the
teachers' sake, not for the kids' sake. You will make a nightmare out
of your specials time.
Renee
On Feb 11, 2009, at 4:28 PM, Yingling wrote:
I don't know of any specific research but I do know from my situation
in 5th grade it's hard to do especially with scheduling. Scheduling
seems to be a nightmare with us because of RTI, Specials, Lunch, and
SMe (computer program everyone does). Since we are departmentalized
our intervention teachers have problems scheduling our kids because of
the times that they need to pull our kids - we don't have the right
students, therefore, they end up taking our students during our
reading time which they aren't suppose to be doing but there just
isn't enough time in the day when our kids aren't departmentalized.
This probably doesn't make sense, but I hope you get the idea.
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