Introduction
Laulima Lokahi, (Pulling Together) created two types of teams that focused on two areas. First, Individual Student Support Teams were formed around single students to help them meet their own educational and post school goals. Second, a knowledgeable Critical Friend helped school staff create a School Wide System Improvement Team that facilitated constant self evaluation and improvement to become Learning Schools. The work of each team was determined by a distinct set of objectives and guiding principles.
Individual Student Support Teams:
Laulima Lokahi had a vision-driven approach to planning, and implemented a student-focused, strength-based assessment and planning process which was responsive to each student's unique educational needs and involved families in a meaningful way. Facilitators began by having one or two orientation meetings with the student and his/her family to learn about the student's strengths and goals. Sometimes facilitators met with the student and his or her family together, but often facilitators held separate meetings for the student and family, especially in cases where there were perceived tensions. The meetings with the students were generally informal. Usually the facilitator asked the student questions like, "What are your strengths," "What are your interests," and "What is your vision for your future?" The main purpose of these interviews was to learn what the student wanted from his or her education, and what s/he wanted for the future. If students did not already have a clear picture of what s/he was interested in pursuing, the facilitator gave the students cameras with instructions to take pictures of things they liked. Using these photographs, the facilitator worked with the student to ascertain what interests the student might have. The facilitator held similar meetings with families and teachers to learn what they wanted for the students' future and education. Although teachers' and families' concerns were taken into account, the students' interests, desires and strengths were the basis for their individualized interventions.
Once the facilitator had developed a clear picture of the student, s/he assembled a Student Success Team for each young person, consisting of the student, his or her family, teachers, and any human service providers who were involved with the student. The teams' first step was to work with the student to identify a realizable goal the student was interested in pursuing. This goal was based on the student's strengths and interests, and had to be something the student identified for him or herself. Once the team had a goal, they developed an action plan for how each member of the team would support the student in realizing the goal. Parents offered help at home, teachers gave support in the classroom, school psychologists lent their expertise in dealing with behavioral issues, and social service agency personnel who were already involved with the student, or who the team felt was needed by the student, offered specialized services. For example, one student wanted to join the football team, but in order to do so, needed to improve his grades and ability to control his temper. His teachers agreed to set up a tutoring session with him. His father agreed to make certain he conscientiously completed his homework every night, and the school counselor worked with him to develop a plan for how he could control his temper. With this longed-for goal in mind, the student had the incentive and energy to improve all aspects of his participation in school so that he could join the football team.
Laulima
Lokahi (Pulling Together)
Ties with Other Agencies and Services
The facilitator also helped teams reach out to other services and agencies. The Student Support Teams were continually asking the question, "What does this student need in order to do well in school?" They looked to the community to provide whatever resources were needed by the student which could not be provided by the school. Because students' goals were diverse, every team had a different emphasis, and contacted different community members for different needs. For example, one student had an interest in photography, but her school lacked the resources to support this interest. Her Student Support Team contacted a local photographer to see if the student could work as an assistant in the studio. One team suspected a student might be dealing with a hearing loss. They connected the student with a hearing specialist, and then provided whatever support was needed to help the student perform in school despite the disability. Because students were continually growing and changing, their needs changed over time. For this reason, the Student Success Team had to constantly monitor students' progress, and modify their plans if they discovered their approach was not working, or had stopped working.
When a Student Success Team discovered a way the school was hindering a student, the facilitator took this information to the School Improvement Team to aid in the process of continual school improvement.
Laulima
Lokahi (Pulling Together)
Community Partnerships in the School Wide System
Improvement Team
Just as the Student Success Teams evaluated a students' needs, and looked for resources inside and outside the school to creatively address those needs, the School Wide System Improvement Team examined the needs of the school on a systemic level, and explored how resources within the school and in the community could be used to meet these needs. The process this team used heavily relied on ideas from the work of Peter Senge in books such as, The Fifth Discipline, and Schools that Learn. The School Wide System Improvement Teams included anyone who was interested in and committed to school reform. Members were parents, teachers, administrators and members of social services agencies who collaborated with the school regularly. Quite often, the most effective members were people who had been "squeaky wheels," and had shown intelligence in a proactive critique of the school system.
Just as Student Success Teams needed help from an outside facilitator who had an objective viewpoint on the educational process of a student, the School Wide System Improvement Team needed the perspective of a Critical Friend, who could objectively guide the school staff in a continual evaluation of the school's functioning. Key people within the school system were not enough to create effective School Wide System Improvement Teams. People who were intimately involved with the school could often be limited by the specialized role they played within the system. Furthermore, because school staff and administrators were continually challenged by crises, there was seldom time, nor the intellectual orientation needed to evaluate the macrocosmic level of how the school could better facilitate the delivery of services. For these teams to be truly effective, they needed the presence of someone who could be objective, who was not personally invested in the school, who could make observations free from worrying whether their contribution might be politically problematic in their place of work.
Communication between the School Wide System Improvement Team and each of the Individual Student Support Teams was crucial to the school's self-reflection and improvement process. Although the primary function of the Student Support Teams was to give support to students on an individualized level, these teams gained a wealth of information about how and why some students fell through the cracks. This information informed the process of improving how the schools interacted with exceptional students.
School-Wide System Improvement Teams met once per week to monitor the progress of Individual Student Support Teams by looking at each team's meeting notes. School Wide System Improvement Team members talked about observations they had made about the general operations of the school. At these meetings, anyone in the school who had a concern about how school operations might be hindering students or staff could voice their observation for the consideration of the team. To gain additional information, the Critical Friend conducted interviews, asking teachers, students, and administrators how the system of the school was hindering their personal mission. The School Wide System Improvement Team considered all the information, and created complete meeting notes about the issues they considered during each weekly meeting.
On a quarterly basis, the School Wide System Improvement Team evaluated
all their own meeting notes to discover where improvements needed to occur
on the systematic level. At this quarterly meeting, the team answered four
questions.
The School Wide System Improvement Team then discussed how to implement
changes in these areas. Solutions to these issues often included professional
development for teachers, changes in ways school staff communicated with
each other and parents, and the formation of closer ties between the school
and other human service agencies. These were just a few among countless
possibilities for school improvement.
For this system to work, there had to be a system for accountability to make certain that individuals who volunteered to complete tasks actually followed through. Members of the School Improvement Team either took responsibility for following through personally on the plans they generated in quarterly meetings, or they took responsibility for delegating these duties to school staff who were willing and able to work toward implementing change. At each subsequent meeting, the School Wide System Improvement Team discussed the progress of each plan for systems change it instituted. If problems with the plans appeared, the team considered how to overcome these problems, or re-evaluated whether the plan was viable in the first place. Documentation was crucial to a system of accountability so that there was a record of who was responsible for tasks, and how successful they had been in following through on plans.
Because every school had different resources and issues, every School Wide Systems Improvement Team solved different problems using the unique resources which existed in the local community. Laulima Lokahi was a project that established a process to encourage schools to be self-reflective and self-improving, by learning how to work with and improve the services and resources they already had, or by looking to the surrounding community to locate resources students and staff needed which were not available within the school house walls.
Laulima Lokahi (Pulling Together)
Required Resource Information:
Under Construction, due for release
October 2001.
Contact:
Jacki Rhuman, University Affiliated Program University of Hawai’i,
1776 University Avenue, UA4-6, Honolulu, HI 96822 rhuman@hawaii.edu