Your recent article, “Grand
Jury Investigates Avenal District”, reported the findings of the grand jury,
and as teachers at Avenal High School, we would like an opportunity to respond
to the grand jury’s assessment of our teachers, as we felt the need for our
voice to be heard as well.
First of all, let’s discuss
block scheduling: According the grand jury report, “the schedule received some
criticism from teachers who said they didn’t receive much warning about it and
that they weren’t included in the development of the schedule.” We spent the
ENTIRE 2013-2014 school year discussing/ planning/ preparing for block
schedule; it seemed that every staff meeting and leadership meeting involved a
discussion of it. There wasn’t a single teacher on staff that didn’t have a
voice or knew that block scheduling was going to begin this past school year.
Sometimes a vocal minority becomes the squeaky wheel that gets the oil, or in
this case, a grand jury investigation, but, we are happy to report that with
the implementation of block schedule, our student behavior and discipline has
improved. Suspensions and expulsions have dropped significantly, as have
violent and nonviolent incidents.
Secondly, regarding
Chromebooks, as with any new endeavor there are people who hit the ground
running and those that struggle to get out of the gate. Being that this is only
our second year as a staff with every student having a Chromebook, it is
expected that there is a steep learning curve and some teachers might not be as
proficient as we would like, but as professionals, we are constantly developing
new strategies and approaches to integrating technology into our classroom. The
staff have access to many resources to help them monitor Chromebook usage and
are gradually folding them into their routines. But, as AHS teachers present
the one day the grand jury visited our school site, we have to question how
many rooms were visited by the grand jury, when, how often, and how much of the
student population was actually observed? We find the answers to these
questions are important to the scope in which our school was investigated and
reported about.
Lastly, Avenal High School,
like any high school, has its issues, but is constantly striving for
improvement and excellence. We would like to see our students’ successes
heralded as much as our teachers’ struggles. For example, our football team was
second in their division, our soccer and cross country teams were champions,
the rest of our athletic department continues to be competitive, we have an
award winning FFA team, our Agricultural Academy of 50+ students has earned 12
college units in their freshman year of high school, our 2015 seniors earned $147,000
in scholarships, overall our students are showing significant growth
academically, and finally, the fact that we are giving our students access to
technology ahead of so many districts in the state is something that should be
celebrated.
June
30, 2015
Hanford
Sentinel
By
Amy Wilkinson and Stephanie Bollweg, teachers at Avenal High School
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