So much to write about! Who knew?
July 23, 2008And here I said I didn’t know WHAT I would blog about. It turns out I have all sorts of things to blog about. I missed yesterday because my Internet, phone, and cable were all out… that is an unfortunate side effect of having bundled packages through the cable company. I somehow survived, at least!
I will focus today on my rural school that Molly asked about.
One day a week, I make the trek down to 4-J School on Highway 50 South of Gillette. This school serves ranching communities South of town as well as some “city kids” whose parents feel the atmosphere is better there and have their kids bussed. (I looked that up… it can have one or two s’s… it just seems to me with one the u would become long!) The school has 42 kids split up into four classes: K, 1-2, 3-4, and 5-6. They have a full time secretary and custodian along with the four full time homeroom teachers. I am not sure if the cook is full time or not. Everyone else goes there on various schedules. The specials teachers rotate every three days and are there all day. The GATE (gifted and talented) teacher goes a couple times a week, the band teacher is there every few days or so, the principal is there one day a week… I go there once a week for half a day.
I know what you’re thinking. HALF a day? Oh, yes. I am “9/10″ at my home school and “1/10″ at 4-J. It’s pretty ridiculous. I don’t have time to accomplish much of anything (each class for half an hour), let alone get the library in shape. Some day I hope the district might realize a library needs more management than someone who has about 30 minutes to spend there when not teaching. I doubt it… but I can hope. I would love to see them get a full time rural librarian/tech facilitator. We have three rural schools in the district–the person could potentially rotate between the three and not have a town school. That way, there would be more time to give to the library, the kiddos would get to see him/her more, AND they would actually have a tech teacher.
As for me, I do what I can in the 30 minutes I get with each group. My library is small–I would give you numbers, but I have no idea. I’m in the middle of getting it all onto the online catalog, but even once it’s there, I share a catalog with the other rural schools, so I don’t know how I would separate out my information. One step at a time. Most of the books are older than I am and transferred from another school that no longer exists. *sigh*
That’s the scoop on 4-J. For those of you were thinking “Little House on the Prairie,” it’s a far cry from that. However, it is definitely an interesting place! And how fun to have a class of kindergartners with just four kids! =)
Thanks for describing your rural school. Maybe through this exercise you can demonstrate how a full time person could facilitate learning beyond the four walls of the classroom. It seems like this would be an ideal group to set up a collaborative blog or wiki with. I don’t know enough to do more than suggest it, but I think we will both know enough by the end of this exercise. Maybe we can set something up so our kids could collaborate on something and you could use it as a tool to show the possibilities. Just thinking out loud. Or typing out loud? Blogging out loud? Whatever.