Education Report Blog
February 5, 2012
Written By Kathy Murphy

In preparation for a public radio show this week, I asked readers to write in with stories about what was working in their schools, despite the lousy economy and perpetual state budget crisis — and ways people have coped with diminishing state funding. It was inspiring to read the responses. Here are some of them:
David Orphal: Skyline High had created a great teacher collaboration system in 2010-2011 for our freshmen core teachers. Each teacher worked in a team of four who shared 130 kids. These four teachers each got two of our six class period to work without their kids. …
This costs money. We used a grant to pay for the extra time these teachers used to collaborate.
This year, we wanted to expand this tool to all of the teachers at school — but, of course, there’s no money. But we solved it.
We moved from a six- to a seven-period day. Now every teacher has five classes with kids and two periods without. Five days a week, we can meet with our colleagues to talk about kids we share or help each other with lesson planning or professional growth. Additionally, we all still have one period each day for individual grading, photocopying and calling parents.
Learn more about budget cut coping tales.