Fun School Activities That Will Keep Your Child Engaged

Assignment 1 

The principal’s story is a narration of the dramatic portrait featuring the challenges that face American public schools. The video highlights the major mandate every principal should make. The character involved in the video is the principal known by the name Tresa Dunbar at Chicago’s Nash Elementary. Giving the background of the school, the principal says that the students in the school comprise 98% studentship from low income families. From this story, the viewer gets an emotional ride which shows the desirable effective leadership during this 21 st century. 

At the time Dunbar commenced her principal duties at Nash, there was so much sense of hopelessness pervading the school. As a means of fostering improvement, Dunbar started by changing the physical environment and creating a more child-friendly culture. While being guided by consistency and integrity and incorporating fellow teachers in decision making, Dunbar won the trust of all the skeptical teachers. With time, the local school council comprising of community teachers, teachers and all parents came to like embrace her idea and got involved in the improvement activities of the school. 

In the video, a viewer can notice how Dunbar makes constant visits to every classroom on her day-to-day rounds, and always recognizing and appreciating the deliberate effort and dedication of teachers and pupils. She further tells how she visits homes of students regularly, walking the neighborhood, walking pupils home and allowing the school to open on weekends so that pupils, parents, and anyone interested in the affairs of the school to meet her. Her strong belief is that the school’s advancement is an outcome of a shared effort, which should be propelled by parents and students who were hungrier for more good changes for their community. 

Assignment 2 

I undertook shadowing experiences completed at one of the school sites in the urban setups of the city. The motive of doing so was to gain a shadowing experience whereby I met with teachers and pupils after-school tutorials. The activity was aimed at identifying some of the collective challenges facing students and teachers. Each of the group was to speak for themselves. The essence of doing so was to recognize that every school setup has its own challenges, which if unaddressed, might pose stagnancy in student performance progress and school wellbeing. 

After classes, one of the observations noticed is that pupils in an elementary school are left alone. Only two teachers on duty are the ones left to oversee and watch over the evening activities. It is known that after classes, students engage into many after-class activities such as sports, cleaning, assignments, and taking meals. The first challenge in this elementary boarding school is the shortage of teachers. I realized that most of the teachers had left for their homes. Only two teachers, cooks, the matron and the dorm masters are a few number to properly assist students until the next day when all the teachers come back for classes. On the part of students, this is something that cannot be spoken out as a challenge. 

Sometimes, students face and even raise multitude of challenges, majority of them relate to shortage of teachers who should be there to offer guidance and direction ( Motion picture on DVD, 2015 ). Teachers on their part cannot raise these issues since they are beyond their scope because they are related to school management. In this elementary school, the only advantage is that the routine is so strict and students have been trained to abide by the routine. That seems to guide them since, every activity has its own time schedule. If I were the principal of such a school, I will begin by championing the District Office to assign more teachers and non-teaching staff to the school. At the school level, I will ensure that the school Board of Directors put more resources and infrastructure. 

References  

Motion picture on DVD. (2015). St Lucie Public Schools. Retrieved July 09, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxdqIGiC9X0 

Lietz, P., In Cresswell, J., In Rust, K., & In Adams, R. J. (2017).  Implementation of large-scale education assessments . Chichester, West Sussex, United Kingdom : John Wiley & Sons.