Mark Harniss: It’s my pleasure today to introduce Carol Leffler. Carol is going to speak with us for about a half an hour. Carol is the chair for assistive technology services in Community Consolidates School District 54 in Schaumberg, Illinois. And she began her career in education as a speech language pathologist and became interested in the application of technology for students with disabilities in the early 1980’s. Carol holds masters degree in speech pathology and educational administration. Her professional experience is quite varied. She’s worked in both private and public schools, and she also has extensive experience in the medical sector. This year starts her 29th year in education with 10 of those years being in district 54. Carol’s strengths and vision focus on accessible technologies for all students so that students can interact with learning and curriculum in meaningful ways. And SD 54 where she currently works is widely recognized as one of the top districts in the nation utilizing a variety of accessible technologies in every classroom, thoughtfully integrating those technologies with the curriculum and making activities and materials readily available.
I chatted with Carol a little bit before this meeting and she said, “You know I really hate it when people read my introduction blurbs. I’d rather they just introduce me as a sassy blonde.” (laughs) So I told her I would tell you all that. So here is Carol Leffler, she’s a “sassy blonde.
(Applause)
Carol Leffler: Hi. It’s really nice to have been here for 2 days, because I feel like I have gotten to know some of you and also feel comfortable talking to you about what we’re doing in our district. A couple of things - I know that you have got the handout and so I’m not going to go through all the points, but I do want to describe what I am doing in my district. When Marty Blair first called me, my first response was like, “Well, you know I don’t… are we really doing anything that’s that unusual that people want to hear about.” You know sometimes when you’re living in you own house, you don’t really know what you’re house is like and so you kind of get used to it, even though it’s an exceptional house and so you think that kind of thing that everyone else live the same way and then you get out in the real world an find out that people really don’t.
And so what I’d like to share with you though is what our district does and I think it’s kind of unique, but one thing that makes it unique and there is a extreme amount of collaboration that takes place between what you would call instructional technologies and assistive technologies. So what I was doing was, when I was first thinking about the presentation, we collaborate a lot. I’m in the assistive technology department but we have a learning technologies department which kind of meets the needs of our typical kids. And so I was saying to them, you know what would be a really good title for this presentation, and so they’re like… we bant around ideas and things and nobody really came up with anything and “Technology For All Students” it sounds kind of dry, but I was kind of disappointed that we turned in our NTags because I’m going to let you vote on the title for this presentation. Here are your choices. Now, I got these from…I’m exercising the other day and I am watching CNN headline news, I don’t know if anyone saw this, and they said that in the state of NJ, they are going to be re-writing the slogan. Did anybody hear that? (Yes) Was this like a scream? Okay. For those of you who saw this. Anyhow, in CNN headline news, they said here are 4 choices, and I am not lying these are 4 real, real choices. New Jersey – what are you asking? New Jersey - how you doin’? 3rd choice - It always smells like this here. 4th choice - New Jersey - bada bing. Okay. So, here are your technology choices for the title of this presentation.
Technology For All - What are you asking? Technology For All - how you doin’? Did I get it right like Joey? Technology For All - it always smells like this here. I know sometimes it does. And Technology For All - and this is kind of a weak, well we don’t really use this in our district it sounds like extreme measures - bada bing. So let me see a show of hands for the first one - what are you asking? Okay, we could have been doing this electronically if we wouldn’t have turned in our badges. Second one - How you doing? Ah… that’s a good one, okay. Third one. It always smells like this here. And the last one, bada bing. So I think that the next time I present on something like this I have to name it “Technology for All - How you doin’.” So, thank you.
Alright let me tell you a little about our district, we are going to sound small as compared to some of the larger districts like Chicago or New York or Houston, districts like that, but we’re actually the third largest elementary district. We are all elementary. So we’re the third largest elementary district in the United States. Those are just some facts and figures about our population. It’s pretty typical. I want to mention that we are not in an affluent area, because when you see what we do, because you will think we have a lot of money, but we don’t, it’s pretty typical.
But what I wanted to share with you is some thoughts I have about why this works and what I think are probably our secrets because most people don’t know about them. I will be talking about the points, just our visions, administrative support that we have. You’ll find out what the M&M’s of technology, what I consider the M&M’s of technology, talk about leader personality styles, follow-up support, by which we’ve seen are very, very important, when you’re talking about getting teachers to carry out thing that you want them to do and integrate a new technology into the curriculum and also better staff development plan.
Okay, I know that people probably know that you have to have a vision, but the thing that makes our kind of exceptional is that our vision has been shared. What happened when I first started in the district about 95-96, we had two technology plans that were being written - one for assistive technology and one for instructional learning technology. And that year the two plans were merged into one plan, which I thought was outstanding, I’ve been working in the assistive technology field for a long time and I always knew that was the route to go, it wasn’t because I told anybody do this, it just was the right time and the right people were in place and it just happened, and it just made sense for all of our kids. I am just going to show you some very short examples of our technologies plans, but when I say that the first plan included all students it really did and that is how it was worded. Assistive technology the actual words assistive technology were written into the plan, so it wasn’t like you had to guess, it alluded to assistive technology or those special ed students, it was written into the plan.
I’m pretty proud of the fact that since ’95 and ‘96 every tech plan we’ve written includes all students. It has not changed. So, I think that is really a great thing for our plan. The other thing that I see happening in districts is, even though technology plan is written, there is a lot of inequity in schools. What will happen is if you’re… we’re in very diverse area of Shaumberg, and so we have some schools that are in affluent, middle class areas, and then there are school that are not. But that doesn’t mean that schools that can’t raise money, like with the PTA or whatever, get less technology. Everybody is entitled to the same technology. It’s based on numbers of students in those building, but if you are in a lower socioeconomic status geographic area in our district, it doesn’t mean you get less - you get the same as what every other building gets. That’s different; because I see districts do it a little bit differently. I am going to talk about our tech plan, we just finished writing it in May, and I will show you an example. But before, want show you an example of the tech plan. I want to show you a video clip and I think it captures the vision. Obviously, the vision came from our top administrators, our superintendents and assistant superintendents, and this is just a little clip on our superintendent talking about it.
Carol: About 13% of our population is considered special needs.
Lynne: My number one goal with special needs children is the fact that they should have everything that every other child has and that we should be able to step in the classroom and, frankly, not distinguish one from another. And I think if you have that in mind first, that belief, that value, everything else will fall into place.
Carol: Our technology plan is probably pretty unique as compared to most in the United States. The plan was designed with all kids in mind so that all students' needs would be met. Students would be learning side by side, and all students would improve using technology.
Lynne: Inclusion doesn't mean, "Okay, we're going to take this child. We'll find a teacher aide, and we'll sit them over in a corner of the classroom." That is not inclusion. Inclusion means that you are a participant just like every other child. You're a participant in learning and whatever we need to do so that your participation is evened out so that you can compete, so that you can communicate, that's what we need to do.
Carol: That was a good start, wasn’t it? You can see why it’s not too hard to understand why we include all students. That was our superintendent 10 years ago. She is no longer with us. She retired 2 years ago. But, we’ve had that vision from day one and I think that’s really important because when the top leaders are communicating that to staff, I think that educational staff needs to hear that. Because still even though that might be the vision, some teachers might be saying “Yeah! Yeah, I guess I’ll do it.” It’s kind of mandated in our district. So, and I think that’s really important and makes us different.
Okay… this is going to look like a typical technology plan, but what I want to show you is that in the plan, I just took a goal out of it from 95-96. You can see the words assistive technology, they’re in the plan. So it’s not vague. But, when we talked about to maximize the potential of every student, we really meant every student, we didn’t mean every typical student, we really meant every student. It was communicated that way.
This is an example of our 2005-2006 plan and in Illinois we have to write a plan for 3 years and then you rewrite your plan. This one we took and you have this in your notes and I am not going to go through it, but, we talk about all students, it’s the same as we’ve been talking about for 10 years and we mean all students. This plan was a very interesting plan, there were 6 of us on the writing team, and it was probably the Cadillac, or what I consider the Cadillac of technology plans, we really touched based with every constituent in our district. I’m not saying it’s easy; it’s a lot of working. It’s a lot of work getting feedback. Running goals past people, getting their input, getting their buy in and it was interesting, when we got finished with the plan, which was around April/May. We have number of people and I will talk about the positions in our district and that makes it a little different, but we had people that were involved in writing goals for the tech plan. 2 people for every building. So 54 people were out presenting the tech plan the same day, the same time. So all educational staff heard it. And I think it was really important because all the same communicated, we all had the same power point, the same notes, obviously it could vary a little bit, but everybody was communicating the same information and getting input on it.
Okay, I know these seem elementary and you’ll be like, “Yeah, I know, I know”. But I mean when I am talking about administrative support, it has to be a clear message from the top, the top administrators have to endorse this. They have to be able to communicate that. This is just a picture I took a few weeks ago. We have an onsite classroom in one of our buildings. This was a building that it’s a very transient population. We have race track near the school and a lot of the kids parents work at the race track and so when the race track closes, the kids move. So the population changes a lot. The staff a few years ago was not very motivated to try to meet the needs of all kids, but I think that they have gotten on board. We have a new principal in the building who communicates a very clear message. She gets her people going. It’s an onsite class, 23 regular ed teachers take a 6 hour assistive technology class to help their kids. This was onsite. The guy in the shirt and the tie in the back is the assistant principal. He came to the class, to support his teachers to find out what they’re learning, how there are doing with the program and how they are going to be able to apply it in the classroom setting. I think that says a lot. And I was so pleased to see him come because now he knows what this tool will do and will be able to hold the teachers more accountable. This is the kind of administrator support that I am talking about.
The other thing that happens in our district is that, believe it or not, in our technology departments the top technology leaders, like myself, are allowed to make decisions, big decisions. And I think that sometimes that doesn’t happen. We are allowed flexibility, we are allowed to come up with initiatives and other innovative projects, and were supported. And sometimes is sounds like a crazy idea and we might propose it and the superintendent or assistant superintendent will say, “I am not really sure about that, but I want to think about it.” And lots of times they’ll give us the go ahead on things. They trust us. They see the results that we’ve gotten and they allow us to make decisions. I see people in other technology departments and they’re not really allowed to do that.
Okay. I hate to talk about the dirty “M” word… money. But, here’s my M&M’s of technology, because the longer I am doing this, you have to have people – You’ve gotta have man power and money and I am not talking about lots and lots and lots of money, but you have to have some money. I am not going to read through this, you can see we have a lot of support staff. Technology is important in our districts. We’ve got a lot of staff, a help desk, people to man that help desk to answer questions that teachers call in with. That’s key. We have a troubleshooter onsite in our building, which troubleshoots some of our technology problems, like maybe a printer problem, or something is not working right. It’s kind of the first go-to person, before you might call the help desk or get a technician to come look at the problem. We have ATFs and LTFs. We have assistive technology facilitators we call them and learning technology facilitators. We have quite a few. These are not technicians; they are teachers, people who have educational backgrounds. They go out in buildings and support teachers on site. Now there is not one per building, but we have a lot of support. We’re in buildings every week. And even though I have a leadership position in the district, my preference is to have buildings. I don’t really get to know what happens what do people need, how do things work, how do kids do. I think that is what sometimes allows me to make better decisions in terms of technology - buying new technology, using technology. We are all in the building supporting teachers. I think that’s really a big strength of ours.
I want to say before I talk about the money part, this is really a joint venture. This is not letting technology do this and then let learning technology do this. It is very collaborative. Our departments have meetings - 2 meetings a month. We teach each other technologies. Assistive technology folks know about learning technologies - they know about our tools. We have project days, where if we’re going to be rolling out a new tool, like we just rolled out Solo in our district on a very large basis. And we all went into buildings together and we trained as teams - a learning technology facilitator and an assistive technology facilitator. I think that’s a real strong message to people. It’s not just our technology or our kids, or special needs kids’ technology, so I think that’s something that really makes us strong. We also have a really good link to curriculum instruction and I think that sometimes I see districts, even in our state, I don’t know how you do this with out knowing about you curriculum. You’ve got to know the content and what kids are doing in language arts and in social studies, science, math. It’s really collaborative. We work together and train each other. Even our instructional coordinators that go out and help teachers with curriculum, they know about our schools. It’s really a collaborative effort.
I wish I could say that we’ve been doing this thing for many years, but it’s only been in the last year. I think this is going to be a key to making things work for our new staff, for our news teachers that we hire. But, just this past year, they have to take a week of orientation. It’s mandatory. They come and spend a week in August with us. They’re paid and it’s not voluntary, it’s mandatory. They come before school starts. During that week, we give them not only curriculum instruction, but we give them learning technology and assistive technology. So, that regular ed teacher that was just hired to teach 5th grade, they are learning about screen readers, they’re learning about digital text, they’re learning about supports for their kids that are struggling students. So, I have seen a huge difference with just starting in the last year, because now I am seeing regular teachers come to us and are saying, “I’ve got these kids that did not meet in reading and they’re like, Carol, can you please help me with these kids?” and I’m like, “you bet.” So I think that is another way to build that into your program.
Alright…the dirty “M” word, money. You got to have some money. I am not saying that all of our equipment is brand new equipment, because we’ve got some old stuff too, but what we kind of have to do is cycle it through. When it gets to the point where we can’t use it anymore, then yes, new equipment has to replace old equipment. For our new technology plan that we just wrote, we built that into our plan, so that we have recycling, it’s a lot smarter and we are hoping the we can help teachers a lot more so that they have newer equipment in their classrooms.
You have to hire good staff, you know that. And you also know that you have to have some money in a budget for staff development. A big part of our technology plan is staff development and when we wrote that part of our plan we actually took a look at the populations of our district that were not utilizing technology. Some of those people were our instructional assistants and we have quite a few and our bilingual folks didn’t seem to be taking advantage of the technology resources. Early childhood, it just seemed like an area where teachers were not taking advantage of staff development and using equipment and so we targeted those populations. We’ve even targeted our support staff. And we’ve already for his year, on institute day, you know you usually hold an institute day, you staff develop your educational staff, well, our support staff, our secretaries, support staff, our clerical people also got staff development. They learned visual graphics, they learned how to put graphics into some of those tools on Microsoft office tools. So they were also part of that institute day, which I think is a strong message. We are talking about everything here, not just a certain population.
We are not a wealthy district, as I have already mentioned. We have a really, really smart assistant superintendent for business. He keeps us in line. He’s been there 10 years. We’re pretty proud of the fact that we have a balanced budget, 10 years and… He really keeps us sound. We’re not allowed to like over spend, so he tells us when we’re not going to have enough money, or next year you’re going to get cut a little bit, but he keep us inline. And we do get funding from a number of sources, just like everyone else does. So, we don’t have an exorbitant amount of money, I don’t want you to ever think that, even though it sounds like we have lots of resources. We’re a pretty typical district.
Alright, this is going to probably sound a little wishy-washy, or probably more female like, or the emotional side, but you know what, I have to address this because I think that our people that are going out into the field and working with teachers and doing staff development, they have some different personality styles. I’m not saying your top leaders have to have these kind of personalities, but it should be obvious that it’s a passion for you. You should… teachers should be able to look at you and say “It’s like such a part of her, her heart and soul is into it.” And, when I talk about people that have perseverant spirits, and I know everybody is different and I know we have some exceptions, but I am trying to say we can’t do it this way, which is what you typically hear. Our people say that are in these positions say, “it’s not we can’t do it, but how can we make this happen, how can we do this,” and this is our attitude and what we come to the table with. And even if it’s a really challenging problem, and technology issue, or a tech issue, and it might be a content, curriculum issue, but we have a real positive attitude, like how are we going to solve this and that’s what we come from.
I get to hire people, which I think is a benefit, and so you know what hire I hire people that I can tell that this is their personality style. Not that this is the only person I have to have. But it has to be obvious to me that you want to be able to help kids with this and you have to have a passion for it
I don’t see this happening enough in education, but I know one of the key components that’s been in the research of what makes things happen and what things… and why do programs fail. And I think follow up is one of the key factors. We have our facilitators that are out in buildings weekly. They work with teachers that are in classrooms. They check up with people after they’ve taken classes. So they’re there to support teachers and also the students and I think that’s a huge part of it.
We’re always linked to school improvement plans, that’s a given. But the other thing that we offer the teachers, we take the curriculum and in our department of assistive technology we actually do a lot of the curriculum, I hate to call them modifications, but we do them and we put them on our intranet. So we have a lot of the curriculum in digital formats and we have supports built in. Now, do we have every single thing done? No, but we have a lot. And we do this every summer, we have a summer writing project, its not a lot of hours, but it’s a number of hours, we all take part of that, and we work on it, and so we make it available for our teachers. So, if we can give it to them and they don’t have to create it themselves night before then I think a lot of people will use it.
I talked a little about our staff development plan, it’s really solid. We looked at it very scrutinizingly and we made sure that we had the money for it for three years. We also wanted to concentrate, I know I mentioned about our different populations that might not be taking advantage of staff development, but we also look at differentiation for our learners, but often times when we’re doing for our staff development we don’t look at our teachers as the learners and making sure that our instruction is differentiated for them. So that those people that can't stay after school, have another way of taking a class or learn more information. So we offer them a variety of a ways to be able to learn.
And finally, I know it must sound like utopia, doesn’t it? It’s not, it’s not. You know we’re always learn and growing, we’re always looking for better ways to do things, more efficient ways to do things. But I have to say you have to work together on it. You can’t do it alone, assistive technology can’t do it alone, learning tech can’t do it alone, and curriculum instruction can’t do it alone. I think it has to be a joint effort. And then, why are we there? Every time that we seem like we’re troubled by something or a huge challenge, we have to go back to what are we doing this for. Why are we doing this. And I think our focus is really consistent, it’s to our kids and their success in learning and their access to learning.
Okay. I mean that was like the speed presentation. I know I went quickly, so we could have discussion, but are there any questions?
Audience member: I have a question. One of the slides, your previous slides, you were talking about there is a tech person in every building. Is that tech person, is that an add-on duty for one of the teachers?
Carol: You mean like a tech troubleshooter. Our tech troubleshooter is usually one of the teachers, but they can address the technology problems after school. They get a stipend, not a huge stipend, but they get extra pay to work on the technology issue. A lot of times they can solve the problem that maybe an educator might not know something about. But it has really worked out well for us.
Audience member: I think that’s very valuable that you are showing that you have a value on their time. That’s what I wanted to know.
Audience member: Are the assistive technology and learning technology budgets together, separate, or how do you do that?
Carol: I do get a separate budget. It has been severely cut and I know this is being videotaped and so if my superintendent will hear me saying this, but it’s been severely cut because we needed more technology resources a few years ago. It was cut and I lived with that. And then my staff development budget was cut this year too, which really I took a hard hit for that because that’s a budget that I… I would rather cut on equipment than cut on staff development because I think that it’s so important. But I have a really close relationship with the learning technology director, and so for some of our big projects where we needed huge chunks of money, they have given us the money for that. To be able to roll out, like large roll outs in our district. So we tap into their budget, although I have a little separate budget, because we do meet the needs of kids that are communicatively impaired. We have aud-comm devices. We have real specific things for our low instance population that I do have to purchase out of. But it’s flexible and they pay for a lot of things that I can’t always afford. So it all comes out of the same pot, but because I have such a close working relationship with that person, we can work those things out. My budget is not big enough to support everything I want to do.
Audience member: Well this is a related question, and I am glad yours was answered first. Often time in K-12 one of the real barriers can be the issue of funding. This is a kid with special needs, that all of the support to technology needs comes from that budget versus a broader general ed question, which is, if it’s technology for all students it should come out of the general ed budget. So I am wondering and you might have answered part of this when you were talking about the monies flowing back and forth, but how is this overall debate viewed or framed within your district? Are most of the monies coming from general ed with some coming specifically out of IDEA funding?
Carol: I wish I could tell you I could speak to exactly how the budget is organized and arranged, but I am not high enough up in the system to have access to that, however I do know this, a lot of the technology budget comes from Medicaid monies and that’s put into a very large fund and we take a look at that and then talk about how that’s going to be spent. So, like our technology plan, what we’re trying to do next year and it actually starts after Christmas, we are putting more laptops in junior highs and that was a huge expense. We didn’t say, “Does this come out of this budget?” It comes out of the technology budget, but its technology for all kids.
Audience member: I just meant that folks will argue that, “How does this all get funded” because there’s that dichotomy, everyone thinks someone else should be paying for it.
Carol: And I am not going to, I don’t want you to think this is heaven, because we have out battles and we have our challenges and junior highs getting these new computers, we’ve already had a number of heated discussions about, are we going to make sure that all the special ed staff get new computers. I don’t want you to think that we don’t have challenge with this, because we do, we have these discussions. But at least there are voices that are loud enough to be heard and somebody hears them, and when Mark said I’m a sassy blonde, I’m sassy. And I might go home crying, but I am there for a reason and I feel that I have to be there to advocate for the kids and the teachers, so I usually don’t let something die.
Audience member: Thank you Carol.
Carol: I also want to mention too, I have the ears of my superintendents and I am very fortunate that they respect me and they listen to me and, you know, I’m asked my opinion so I am not left out of those decisions.
Audience member: In information sciences and IT circles there’s a lot of conversations these days about learning styles, and of course has been generated, propagated or facilitated by the technology. I am wondering if you are seeing that especially since you are working in the elementary school sectors and seeing it earlier on. We’re seeing it in higher education and at least there’s talk about it. So I am wondering if you are seeing it and also if you could help me understand what the “it” is. What is the different learning styles that seem to be all the buzz these days? What’s changed?
Carol: We’ve been looking at different learning styles for a long time, I wish I could tell you that in our schools it’s a perfect model and that everybody is using differentiated instruction, because that, I think when you use differentiated instruction you have to be aware of different learning styles, and I would love to tell you that’s what’s happening everywhere, but I think we are a ways away from that. We keep trying to move in that direction, because I think that when you are integrating technology into the curriculum, I don’t know how else to do it unless you have a differentiated style teaching and a differentiated model in the classroom. But you know, we know that and we try and keep that in mind, and in curriculum instruction, we try to address that. But we still have people that teach to their own learning style, you know how that is, but I think that we have enough support going into buildings that we’re trying to make changes in that.
Audience member: Can I ask quick follow up question, I’ll speak loudly. Do you think you see more peer learning going on among the students rather than teacher-student interaction, or not?
Carol: We do… I see it all the time. We just rolled out… we decided… we rolled out a huge license for Solo, that’s from the Don Johnston Company. We started with a 700 seat license, which is large, we decided instead of training the teachers, we would train the kids. (laughs) Because you know what, I wrestled with it all summer, and I kept thinking about it and thinking about it, and I said, “how are we going to do this, it’s a lot?” And if we have to train all those teachers that are going to affect those kids, and I was like, lets train the kids instead. And I love it, I really do, because now the kids know the tools and can advocate for themselves. And next year I’ll have less kids to train because those kids will already know the tool. But, what I noticed when you are training them is that they are teaching each other.
The day before I left, I trained kids on the Kurzweil. We are using the Kurzweil system in our district. And I was training them on the Mac Kurzweil and they were on Ibooks, and I was showing kids features of it and before I knew it, they had taught each other features I hadn’t even brought up yet. It’s like natural for kids. It’s not natural for adults, but it really is for kids. So, I see that a lot happening in our schools. Just so that somebody, I didn’t put it into our presentation - we are a district that had a one to one laptop initiative in 4th, 5th, and 6th grade, and let me just say that so that if somebody says you never mention anything about that one to one initiative. We are seeing very, very different results by this one to one initiative, but what I have seen with the one to one initiative is a lot of peer interaction and peer teaching. The teacher’s function has to change, their role changes, because you are not always the direct teacher, you’re the facilitator of learning and knowledge. And so I think that has been an asset and a plus to the project. I am not saying we are staying with the one to one either.
Audience member: I am wondering if your district has been participating in, and this is relating to the “M” question again, whether your district participates in the Department of Education’s EETT formula grant program, and if… what your experience has been with it?
Carol: Okay, can you write that down for me, because I don’t know because I don’t write those grants and I don’t know if they do, but I will ask if they do participate in that. I don’t know. I’m unsure.
Mark: We will take about one more question…
Audience member: I wanted to follow up on the training of kids and ask about any resistance or what the reception was among the teachers that have been bypassed and you kind of started to talk about it in the one to one conversation that they must already know that the kids learn it faster than they do, but can you talk a little about how that process has been in your district for teachers to start or to stop being their direct link for instruction.
Carol: We are going to offer classes on it, so we’re going to allow them to take the classes. Wt we’ve been trying to do is, we have an extra advantage in our district, we have early release day on Wednesdays, the kids get out a half earlier and the educational staff has to stay an extra half hour, 45 minutes. So we have the opportunity every Wednesday to do staff development in our building, so we do it. It is a perfect opportunity for us to teach the teachers parts of things, so they won’t get the whole training, but we will show them what their kids are doing. We have some tech subs and we are able to use the tech subs and train the kids with the teachers - that would be the optimal way. I would have loved to be able to do that, have the students learn and then the teacher behind them learning what they are learning, but we have the same problem as everyone else has with subs, and we can’t sub everybody, but we do have these tech subs and they are actually technology subs, not for when the teacher’s sick, but tech subs. And every building gets three tech subs at the beginning of the year and three in the second half of the year and so we’ve been able to use those, and teacher rotate in and so you can do some staff development that way and also for teachers to take advantage of the training. So that’s been good.
We haven’t seen a lot of resistance. In fact, I haven’t even heard any negative feedback on it. It’s very interesting, we have a new language arts programs that we’re going to be adopting and I think it will change things I think. People are very open minded about things and people are understanding that we have a number of struggling readers and so they are a little bit more open to what am I going to use, what can I do to help these kids. And so they are not quite as resistant and negative. I just see that we are in a different state right now because of the language arts. Language arts is huge when you’re doing a new adoption. And so I think, the majority of teachers want to help their kids and the want to help their struggling kids and so they feel like if there are tools out there that my kids can take advantage of and that I can learn about them, then that would be great. I don’t see them as being as resistant as like previous years or in the past.
Thank you very much.