HIGH SCHOOL FOR HEALTH PROFESSIONS AND HUMAN SERVICES
Two Models for Change
Early Fall
 This fall, the faculty of the High School for Health Professions and Human Services in Manhattan decided to organize self-directed study teams after hearing a presentation from the school’s Professional Development Planning Team (PD Team). The PD Team, which had a very fast start this semester because of its August planning, is composed of teachers, the principal, other administrators, a guidance counselor and the UFT Teacher Center staff member.
At the first faculty meeting, the PD Team explained how the study teams would work, highlighting study-team roles and responsibilities. Each study team would:
• Choose facilitators (stable or rotating).
• Agree on an essential question that would drive its research.
• Agree on a product to demonstrate how its learning had a direct, measurable impact on student learning.
After discussion the PD Team elicited study-team focus topics. The topics were based on students’ learning needs and educators’ instructional needs. These included developing critical thinking, enhancing computer literacy, creating more effective science demonstrations, developing student portfolios, teaching in the 9th-grade block, promoting health awareness, brain-based learning—theory to practice —and academic intervention strategies to support the at-risk student. Eight study teams were formed around these topics.
The study teams will meet throughout the semester—with individuals reporting progress within groups. In January, all of the teams will gather to share their challenges, accomplishments and projects.
Initial Impact
Health Classes
 There has already been a visible impact from the study teams’ work even though it is still early in the process. Barbara Buonagura (Health Awareness Team) is using the studyteam model in her health classes. “Students are bringing in articles on health from such publications as The New York Times and some students, who never showed real interest, are now sharing their discoveries in class,” she says.
In their own study teams, Buonagura’s students use their research articles as well as teacher-provided resources (including a graphic organizer for guidance and structure) to prepare both written and oral presentations. During presentations, the other teams listen and add to their graphic organizers. In this way the concepts (in one case, various psychological disorders) that are being studied can be compared and contrasted by categories (such as symptoms, treatment and community resources). As a culminating project, student teams create their own questions, which their teacher will incorporate into their unit exam.
Critical Thinking
Study teams have organized differently, each deciding how to best use the 50-minute meeting time. For example, during each of its sessions, the Critical Thinking Team asks a member to describe a lesson that integrates critical thinking strategies. Discussion and feedback follow this. “It has been great sharing teaching practices with colleagues and seeing the different ways we approach tasks,” says social studies teacher Kris Erickson. “A colleague shared a useful strategy: students first break down a document into five or six focus areas. This fine-tunes their understanding. Then we can explore the broader issues using higher-order thinking,” adds Erickson.
Team member Stella Sourelis notes that she has always used critical thinking with her French classes, but the study-team experience has provided a focus to pursue its use in depth. “I have discovered how to use portfolios to further promote and assess my students’ critical-thinking skill. I have linked critical thinking to the Foreign Language Standards and I want students to demonstrate their learning through portfolios,” she says.
Science and Portfolio Study Teams
The Science Lab Team and the Portfolio Team work in subgroups by discipline, reporting back intermittently to their larger groups. Ben Friedman, a math teacher and UFT delegate, finds it “helpful when teams customize professional development. I’ve had an opportunity to add to my graphingcalculator skills. My coach is a fellow math teacher who has further gained my esteem during our work together—integrating new technologies into the classroom.”
Sadia Khan, whose team is updating the chemistry labs, is really enjoying the process. She says, “Each of us has a different view of how the lab should be. We are working collaboratively and I really like that. Our team’s project is to put the labs on compact discs (CDs) for every teacher and we hope to continue the process next year as we update the curriculum.”
Teachers have taken ownership and feel they have made a start. “It is a beginning,” says one, “a process which is just beginning to evolve. Together, with ongoing reflection and discussion, we will continue our professional development journey.
Late Fall
Town meetings were the next vehicle for school change. The study teams discovered and discussed key issues, many concerning the entire school. By December, a new collaboration of faculty and administration had evolved to address these issues.
That the town meeting model might now serve the school well was the decision of Lynette Ganim (UFT chapter leader), the principal’s cabinet (Jane Weiss, principal) and Anne Campbell (UFT Teacher Center staff member). They invited teacher Bill Doyle (also the Leadership Team facilitator) to facilitate the first meeting and Anne Campbell to co-facilitate and be the recorder. That meeting brought together teachers, the principal, the administration, and guidance counselors. The agenda was generated by the faculty at the beginning of the meeting in response to the question, “As a faculty member, what concerns do you have for the school?”
To ensure an effective meeting the facilitator asked faculty to generate and agree on meeting norms. These included:
• NO: Side talk or cross talk, personal attacks, gossip after the meeting, grading of papers or reading during the meeting.
• YES: Accurate recording of meeting notes, disagreeing without being disagreeable, being solution oriented, limiting comments to two minutes, being actively present, starting and ending the meeting on time.
When a vote revealed that the vast majority of the faculty preferred to have whole-group discussions, the facilitators concurred. Concerns were then elicited and charted. At this and subsequent meetings, there was one significant refrain: the need for all factions in the school to respect one another. “We have a need to actually learn how to communicate with one another,” stated one colleague, “and to learn how to manage our anger, our conflicts.” Many expressed the desire to have both student and faculty training in conflict resolution and anger and stress management.
Both town meetings and study teams have provided opportunities for the faculty of the High School for Health Professions and Human Services to engage in collaborative reflection and planning. Proponents of the town meeting share the view of math teacher Ben Ho: “I think town meetings are a good way of figuring out how to improve our school’s atmosphere and environment of behalf of our students.” Many faculty members have commented that as the school year progresses, they are excited to continue participation in these collaborative faculty efforts to strengthen the school for students’ learning.
Further Reading
Guskey, T., and Huberman, M. (1995). Professional Development in Education: New Paradigms and Practices. New York: Teachers College Press.
Killion, J. (2002, Dec./Jan.) For Good Measure: How to Assess Staff Development’s Impact. Results. National Staff Development Council (NSDC). Online: www.nsdc.org.
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