Quality School

-- Anonymous, December 08, 1998

Answers

I was almost complete in writing my response to the Quality school and it disappeared. That becomes very frustrating.

Much of what Glasser has stated about Quality school and solving our problems makes a lot of sense. However, teaching staff and learning how to do this coopertively may be one of the hardest areas to conquer.

In the beginning it would be best to find out what the community as well as the staff feel about the situation. If less than 75% of your staff don't believe in this approach, it becomes harder and harder to force someone to teach in this manner.

It would benefit everyone within the group to find out what type of leaders are within the school system. The superintendent, principal, and other administrator's would benefit themselves if they knew what types of leaders are working amongst themselves with the system. I compared Glasser's book with another book that I read "The Leader's Window", by John d. Beck & Neil M. Yeager. They talk about the four different leaders: director, problem solver, developer & delegator. When talking about leadership it sure helped to identify what type of leader I was within the system. It helped me even more to find out what type of a leader the Superintendent was. Which brings us into the next area of non-coercive management.

If your school and community have decided that this is the way you are going to approach the next school year, then choice theory could benefit the school, but everyone must be in agreement with this approach or it will not work. To be successful at it, everyone must approach students the same way. Taking on the Quality school approach can be very beneficial for students. We need to realize that to change the system it takes time and sometimes we forget to take our time for the end result.

I think that the Quality School approach would work within the small school system that I work within. In fact I may do some more reading on Choice Theory and see how effective it may be

To have a successful Quality school, teachers need to have the Principal's full support and know that whatever approach the school has agreed upon that they will be backed with this approach. But in the end the Principal needs to have the Superintendent's and the school boards support also. Then the Quality School can be most effective.

-- Anonymous, January 17, 1999