Organizational Structures

Leadership and Organization

"There is no I in the word Team."

This has always been my favorite saying.  As individuals we know our potential, but as a team it is yet realized.  As educators, organizational structures are needed to establish learning relationships between educators and students.  We sometimes believe that an organizational structure needs to be inflexible and rigid.  This is found not to be necessarily effective.  A young adolescent's ideas and values change as they become young adults.  There are many influences that create the final adolescent human development cycle and it changes constantly.

In the textbook, Organizational Structures are defined as "fostering purposeful learning and meaningful relationships”.  The organizational structure helps to improve student achievement.  Our students are very observant.  They watch how educators work with each other.  When educators and students are given the ability and schedule to work collaboratively in the planning and implementation of their learning, then students learn how to utilize this new skill in real life applications.  There is also the benefit for educators to understand the whole student and not just the piece that they interact with during regular classroom time.

Educators also must have scheduled time to meet, to discuss a student’s progress and determine what the next steps might or should be.  Without this time to do this, an educator is basically working on their own and not getting the information they need to create an effective curriculum and learning environment for their students.

When I mentioned that organizational structures should not be inflexible or rigid, this is in reference to how we schedule classroom time, the environment it is implemented and how it is assessed.  For example, I am a cluster teacher and as a cluster teacher I do not have the same students every day.  Most of my students I see only two to three times a week depending upon their schedule.  But there are times that the schedule changes and this affects my students’ learning time.  Most of my students have been diagnosed with Autism and their computer time is important for continued socialization and communicative growth. 

By collaborating with my fellow educators, we create a schedule where the computer class is integrated into a lesson that the classroom teacher had prepared.  Of course, this takes extra time to coordinate into a cohesive lesson, as I usually have my own lesson plans, but I think if it was not for the collaboration of my fellow colleagues, this would not be possible.  We added more time on to the class period which was approved by my administrator and we found that the schedule did not interfere in any other important schedule time, like lunch or recess or dismissal.  This created a flexible learning environment for our students and it did not have a large impact on schedule of the curriculum.

There is also another example of how a school can create a lasting relationship between educators and students.  One of my friends teaches at a public school in the Bronx.  This school is an alternative structured school, one of the few public schools in the city that has grades Kindergarten to 8^th grade in the same building. 

The educators in the school have the ability to move forward with their students that is to be the teachers for the same students as they traverse the educational system. There is a three-year limit when they must turn over their class to another teacher. She has had the same students for three years now and she feels it has made a big difference in the relationship she had with her students.  They see her as someone who is committed and invested in their learning.  This has also given her more time to assess her students’ abilities and progress as they mature.  On the other side, her students have the highest achievement level in the school and she contributes this to the fact that they had been together for three years where time has given her the ability to make a big difference in their learning.

When they move onto their next step which is 7^th grade (the school has kindergarten to 8^th grade), she has detailed analysis of each child that she can then pass on to the 8^th grade teacher.  The 8^th grade teacher will have an advantage that most other educators of other schools do not have.

As we can see, there are several ways to implement a flexible, integrated, collaborative and beneficial organizational structure that not only helps educators to be successful, but our students as well.