Middle School Scheduling Webinar

This past Friday, I had a unique opportunity to share some thoughts and ideas about middle school scheduling along with two other principals from Maryland. The purpose of the webinar is to open dialogue and share best practices with our colleagues here in the state and beyond. The webinar series is hosted by the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) in partnership with Johns Hopkins University. Our goal is to close the gap between special education and general education students. In collaboration with the MSDE's Break Through Center and Johns Hopkins University, local school systems in Maryland are working to identify promising practices that will help all students meet or exceed the rigorous local and state academic standards.

This particular session, Building A Master Schedule That Supports Effective Co-Teaching Practices, was hosted by Paul Dunford, a former principal/administrative director and now the Director of Middle School Initiatives for MSDE, and featured Jacques Smith, Principal of Chesapeake Bay Middle, Barbara Canavan, Principal of South Hampton Middle and myself (I also was assisted by Wendy Mundis, the Special Education Support Teacher and Team Leader here at WLMS.) Thanks Wendy!

Each principal was asked to share how we go about scheduling our special education students to support the implementation of the co-teaching model. We were also asked to talk about our scheduling priorities and philosophies. If you are interested in middle school scheduling (at this point if you are yawing, you aren't), I thought this was an informative discussion about the realities, challenges and exciting possibilities of providing access for all students to the general curriculum.

The recorded presentation can be viewed from: http://connect.johnshopkins.edu/p16762824/ My particular section of the presentation happens at the 25.52 minute mark in the 60 minute presentation.

Thanks to Stephanie Harden and all of the other special educators I have worked with for helping me to formulate my thoughts and ideas on how to schedule special education students.

Feel free to email me for more information.