"The schools, districts, and state ensure professional teachers and staff."
The assumptions made regarding Goal 6 have been summarized and divided into four categories outlined below.
Professionally skilled teachers and staff are critical to reaching Florida's seven goals for education.
The principal indicator of professional teachers and staff is their ability to help students attain the student performance standards and outcomes.
Every teacher and staff member functions on the belief that every student can learn.
There is an emphasis on skills, values, and knowledge learned that requires the restructuring of preservice training and creates a need for staff development training.
Changes in teaching and learning create a need for teacher and staff assessment systems that are based on continual quality improvement and the use of student progress data.
Continual improvement of staff is based upon needs identified in each school's improvement plan as well as individual professional development needs.
In addition to demonstrating knowledge of subject matter, teachers should demonstrate teaching skills in the area in which they are licensed. They also should be able to analyze, synthesize, conceptualize, and evaluate.
Staff development is more effective when teachers and staff participate in its planning and implementation.
Using a variety of delivery systems for training is best.
Increased teacher and staff job satisfaction enhances student performance.
Teachers and staff who participate in planning and decision-making at the school level feel a sense of worthiness, ownership, and increased job satisfaction.
Licensing of educators remains a state responsibility and is based on individuals demonstrating required competencies.
"All teachers and staff demonstrate the skills, values, and knowledge needed to help students meet high operational level standards and outcomes."
The outcomes for Standard 1 have been summarized below.
Traditional and alternative forms of assessing students.
Continual quality improvement in an instructional setting.
Technology to manage systems of instruction, recordkeeping, and reporting.
Strategies for teaching students from diverse cultural backgrounds with different learning styles and special needs.
Skills and strategies that promote creativity and critical thinking.
Results, in part, in demonstrating the skills described in the aforementioned outcomes.
Are licensed, in part, based upon their demonstrating the skills described in the previous section.
Results in students meeting the performance standards and outcomes.
"Each school provides a professional environment in which to work and learn."
The outcomes for Standard 2 have been summarized and are shown in three categories below.
Are a result of the collaboration of teachers, staff, and other appropriate stakeholders.
Communicate effectively among themselves, parents, and the community.
Is safe and free of the effects of drug, alcohol, and tobacco use and abuse.
"The state, district, and schools attract and retain an appropriate number of high-performing, professional teachers and staff, which reflects racial and ethnic diversity and includes persons with disabilities."
The outcomes for Standard 3 have been summarized below.
A formal agreement among school districts, community colleges, universities, and State Board of Education will provide strategies for identifying and recruiting individuals into the profession of education and for articulation of instruction to promote and appropriate the supply of teachers.
Monetary and nonmonetary incentives for entering and preparing for the education profession are provided to persons with disabilities, as well as members of racial and ethnic groups that are underrepresented among education professionals in Florida's schools.
The allocation of teachers and staff at each school demonstrates commitment to meeting the standards and outcomes identified in the school improvement plan.
Teachers and staff at each school reflect the racial and ethnic diversity of the student population and the school district population.
Persons with disabilities are represented among teachers and staff without discrimination.
Community and Adult Education practitioners will find 10 strategies for helping schools and advisory councils accomplish Goal 6 in the section below. Each strategy is followed by suggested steps for implementing the strategy.
Cooperate with school district administrators to offer a professional skills workshop series for teachers through the Community and Adult Education Program.
Develop the topics and curricular content for the workshop series in cooperation with the school district's staff development office.
Identify and recruit professionals in the community to teach the professional skills workshop series.
Prepare promotional materials for distribution through the school district's staff development office, school advisory councils, Community and Adult Education brochures, newspaper advertisements, and radio announcements.
Implement and evaluate the professional development series by gathering feedback from teachers who participated in the program.
Utilize the evaluation data to revise and enhance the professional development series and to plan additional professional development initiatives.
Coordinate an inter-district "Teachers As Trainers" professional workday where teachers from one school district provide morning training for teachers in a neighboring school district. After lunch, the teachers who received training switch roles and train those who presented during the morning session.
Contact an Community and Adult Education practitioner from a neighboring school district to assist you with the development and implementation of the "Teachers As Trainers" concept.
Form a committee comprised of staff development personnel, teachers, and Community and Adult Education personnel from each district.
Conduct an assessment to identify topics of greatest interest to teachers and teachers utilizing the most innovative teaching strategies.
Develop a curriculum for the workday based upon the assessment results, and recruit teachers to serve as resource persons.
Arrange for a facility and transportation to the "Teachers As Trainers" workday.
Publicize the workday through the local media outlets.
Videotape the segments of the workday where teachers exchange their most innovative instructional strategies to share with teachers unable to attend.
Establish an Community and Adult Education Teacher-of-the-Year Award for teachers of adults who best develop the creative and critical thinking abilities of their students.
Establish a committee of Community and Adult Education teachers and students to develop the criteria and method of selection for the award.
Recruit a business to sponsor the award and name the award after the sponsor.
Inform all Community and Adult Education teachers at the beginning of the year that the award has been established and will be presented at a school board meeting.
Establish a committee of Community and Adult Education teachers and students to solicit nominations and select the winner of the award.
Announce the winner of the award at a school board meeting, arrange for the board chair to present the award, ask the board chair and award winner to pose for a photograph, and submit the photograph and written copy to your local newspaper the day of the award.
Frame a copy of the award presentation picture and present it to the school board chair for his or her office.
Host a workshop on collaboration for parents, teachers, staff, and other appropriate stakeholders.
Use the information on collaboration that has been provided to Community and Adult Education practitioners by the University of Florida Center for Community Education to develop the content of your collaboration workshop (see p. 215).
Meet with school principals and school advisory council chairs to schedule the workshop.
Seek assistance from school advisory council members in promoting the workshop to parents, teachers, staff, and other appropriate stakeholders.
Promote the workshop in Community and Adult Education course offerings catalogs and by sending fliers to your school board members.
Implement and evaluate the program by asking participants to complete a feedback form upon completion of the training.
Use the information gathered from the workshop evaluation to revise and enhance the curriculum so it is ready to offer during the next Community and Adult Education session.
Offer a "Careers In Education" seminar through the Community and Adult Education Program. The seminar can be a free, noncredit career exploration activity that is used as a recruitment tool to introduce interested community members to the education profession.
Meet with university or college officials who offer degrees in education to discuss a "Careers In Education" seminar, recruit a panel of instructors, and plan the most appropriate time to offer the seminar.
Publicize the seminar in the Community and Adult Education catalog of noncredit course offerings through the use of radio public service announcements and by distributing fliers.
Use currently employed educators to teach the seminar in order to provide participants with "hands on" information about the profession.
Videotape the seminar so that the information can be shared with middle school or high school students who are members of Future Educators of America clubs.
Make arrangement with your local cable television station to show portions of the videotape while you promote careers in the education profession.
Seek feedback from seminar participants and viewers of the videotape in order to make changes in the content or format of the seminar prior to offering it again.
Prepare and disseminate monthly information to principals on how to more effectively communicate with parents.
Subscribe to newsletters published by the National School Public Relations Association or National Parent Institute so that you have readily available information regarding parent involvement strategies.
Use materials available from the aforementioned publications to publish your own "in-house" newsletter that offers strategies for better communication with or involving parents in school activities.
Use your school system's internal mail system to distribute the newsletter to principals and school advisory council chairpersons on a monthly schedule.
Send copies of the newsletter to your immediate supervisor, the directors of elementary and secondary curriculum, the superintendent, the advisory council, and school board members.
Offer smoking cessation clinics for school faculty and staff members in your service area.
Survey all school system faculty and staff in your service area to determine the number of persons interested in smoking cessation clinics, preferred times for the clinics, and locations in the community that would be most convenient.
Meet with American Cancer Society officials to arrange a tentative schedule of smoking cessation clinics to be offered in multiple locations.
Work with school principals to arrange time on their faculty meeting agendas so that the clinics can be publicized. This also provides an opportunity to gather feedback regarding the times and locations for the clinics.
Meet with the American Cancer Society representatives to adjust the schedule of nonsmoking clinics based upon input from faculty and staff.
Promote the clinics in your Community and Adult Education course catalog and through the use of fliers distributed to faculty and staff.
Coordinate a team to periodically assess the perceptions of a school staff regarding their involvement in the school's decision-making process.
Schedule a meeting with your principal and the school advisory council chairperson to propose the formation of a school-based team that would develop a procedure for assessing the perceptions of the school's decision-making process.
Meet with school teachers and staff to solicit their support for an assessment process and to facilitate the formation of a school-based team to implement the project.
Meet with teachers and staff who serve on the school-based assessment team to organize and develop a plan for implementing the project.
Coordinate the meetings of the assessment team and assist with the assessment process that is developed by the team.
Serve as the liaison between the assessment team, the principal, and school advisory council chair to maintain open lines of communication and support for the project.
Analyze the data collected from the assessment process and prepare a report for the principal, advisory council chair, assessment team members, teachers, and staff.
Coordinate an "Appreciating Diversity" inservice training workshop for administrators, advisory council members, teachers, and staff at your school.
Contact your professional colleagues, review literature, and solicit input from the college or university in your area to identify outstanding resource persons who conduct workshops that address the need to appreciate cultural diversity.
Initiate contact with two or three of the resource persons identified to gather information and materials regarding their workshops.
Prepare a summary of the information that you have collected and meet with your district's school principals to share the information and offer to coordinate an inservice training workshop on behalf of their teachers, staff, and advisory council members.
Respond to interested principals by forming a committee of teachers, staff, and advisory council members to assist with the planning and implementation of the inservice training session.
Assist with the promotions and logistics that are involved with hosting an inservice training workshop.
Serve as the on-site coordinator for the inservice training workshop on the day that it is offered.
Establish a minority scholarship fund to assist high school graduates who wish to pursue postsecondary education.
Gather information regarding the establishment of a minority scholarship fund from school systems or community colleges in Florida that have developed such a program. (Santa Fe Community College in Gainesville, FL is one example.)
Convene a group of key community leaders who are likely to support the idea of establishing a minority scholarship fund and present information about other successful fundraising efforts. Gain their support for such a program in your community and form a committee willing to pursue the idea.
Use resource persons from institutions where a minority scholarship fund has been established to share information with your committee about their scholarship fund, such as how their fundraising effort was initiated, and assist with the developmental stages of your project.
Use Community and Adult Education publications to promote the scholarship fund and solicit contributions that are earmarked for graduates of the Adult Education Program.
Promote the involvement of Community and Adult Education in the establishment of the scholarship fund by submitting information to the Vocational, Adult, and Community Education Public Information Specialist for statewide distribution.