School

Today I dropped $375 on a test that will determine whether I can be a principal or not. This test will take four hours and will be part multiple choice and part essay. My had will be cramped and my brain will not be working when I'm done with this test. Yay. I'm confident I can pass it, though, so it will not be $375 wasted :-)

So yesterday's meeting was good. It was weird because it was me and a bunch of principals and RTI coordinators...you know...people that matter. RTI is going to be taking the education world by storm soon and Pulaski is one of the test counties that will ultimately be mentors to other local counties when it's up and running. Basically RTI is assessing what students know and then working on the things that they don't know in a more systematic/scientific way. It's supposed to be highly individualized. One of our elementary schools has already implemented this and it seems to be working well, but now we need to implement it on a larger level including a test group at the high school that is being taught by yours truly. I am teaching a new class - a year long English class where the Reading Specialist will work with them on reading and I will work with them on writing. They want us to use RTI to target skills that they need to know and then I have a feeling they are expecting us to be able to tell the rest of the school how awesome it is when they implement it full-scale at the high school. I did not know what I was getting myself into when I went to this meeting, but I feel sort of honored that they would ask me to be part of a group of such illustrious school officials. I think the timing is good because the state just released the Adequate Yearly Progress Report and both middle schools and the high school did not make AYP. This is the second year in a row that we haven't made AYP, which could mean not good things for us. Maybe RTI will be good for our students and good for AYP.