Solving Problems/Improving Leadership Week 3
This past Friday marked my third week of interning at Youth Life. Since beginning my internship, I have noticed a few problems at the organization that could use improvement. First, many of the students attending the summer program are new to Youth Life. As a result, for the first week, we did not know the academic level of many of the students. So, when assigning them to smaller groups, the lead teachers had to do their best to guess what level the new students would be at. This is difficult because many of the students are academically behind and are placed in the wrong group. It would be helpful, especially as a teacher, to have some sort of baseline to understand the level that the students are at. I think it would be beneficial to have the students take an exam or test so we would have a better understanding of their academic level prior to starting the summer program.
Additionally, communication could be improved in two ways. First, it could be improved among teachers. Most of the teachers have a different group of students for language arts than for math. It would be helpful for the teachers to discuss more openly the behavior and academics of the students so that we have a greater understanding of student progress. This would allow us to fill in the gaps during the day.
Secondly, it would be beneficial to have stronger communication between the lead teachers and the families of the students. Sometimes students do not come to Youth Life or miss a day without explanation or warning. This causes us to spend time waiting outside of their house to pick them up when in fact they are not coming. It also affects the lesson plans for the day. If there was stronger communication between the families and the lead teachers, we could avoid these issues, waste fewer resources, and greater understand why a student may be absent.
Overall, I have been impressed with the leadership at my Youth Life site. I find that the lead teachers are helpful and responsive to my questions. They provide guidance when I ask for help. Additionally, they are open to my ideas, such as when I approached the lead teachers to suggest that one of my language arts students be moved to a higher level reading class, since he was more advanced than my other students.
Really interesting insights. I think your baseline test recommendation is an excellent one. Do you feel comfortable enough to share that with your supervisor? I think you could pitch it as something you’ve noticed having had previous experience with YouthLife when they are working with kids who are more known/understood by the staff. As for the communication among the staff, you answered my query from your last post. Do you think you would feel comfortable recommending the sharing of more information about kids among colleagues? Are there regular meetings at which this could be incorporated? As for communication with parents, I imagine parents/guardians cannot always anticipate absences. As you know from Justice, the circumstances with which they may be grappling may make things unpredictable and they may not be able to be as engaged with the process.