I always smiled when Click and Clack, as NPR’s “Car Guys”, welcomed listeners to the third half of their hour-long radio broadcast. The “third half” was how they partitioned and used their time on the air not about the arithmetic of three halves making a whole. In a like manner, summer is an educator’s fifth quarter. After the four quarters of a school year are completed, summer is the interlude, the fifth quarter for professional reflection, analysis, and planning. There is scant time in the four quarters of a school year for these three activities because daily teaching is all about meeting the immediate needs of students – it is on-demand work. The fifth quarter is all about review, consideration, and design.
In earlier blogs, I have made the professional case for teachers to be calendar year employees not just school year. Today, I let the needed work of education provide the argument.
The case for reflection. A wonderful young teacher in our school district assembles and makes an online posting every Monday of the coming week’s school activities. The weeks of May and early June are loaded to the gills with events – school for all ages is non-stop, on-the-go motion. The spring musical and spring sports schedules, grade level trips to Madison and Green Bay, the spring music concerts, Senior Banquet, and graduation make the days and evening of spring a mad dash to the finish line for teachers. It is acceleration into a quick and final deceleration – and the school year is over.
On her weekly postings of school events there is no time designated for reflection on the school year soon ending. There is not one minute of a school day invested in our teachers’ retrospection about the 2021-22 academic year. Everyone is engaged in the forward motion of ending the school year.
Incorporated in the definition of a professional is the capacity and commitment to being reflective about one’s professional work. Candid reflection affirms the good practices leading to positive outcomes and leads to improvement or elimination of weaker practices. Professionals are reflective yet our school provides no time for reflection. We need to make professional reflection a planned reality in our school year of days.
The case for analysis. Earlier in May our students sat for their spring assessments. Elementary children completed the spring end of their annual universal screener assessments. Elementary and middle level children completed their spring ACT Aspire assessments. High school children took AP exams and final whacks at the ACT. Every child in our school was tested, some multiple times. All of these were calendared on our weekly announcements. What I didn’t see was scheduled time for reflection and analysis of these data. Nada.
We assume teachers have time in May and early June before the last day of school to reflect on their school year and the end-of-year data. But when? Time for teachers in the last quarter of the school year is fully subscribed. Then, the school year is over. Classrooms are closed and teachers depart for the summer.
As of this date, no data meetings have been held in our school for the analysis of spring assessments, evaluation of each child’s fall to spring growth, or the effectiveness of our instruction.
If not now, when? An organized reflection and analysis of instruction and learning is placed on the back burner of school life until late August and the return of teachers for a new school year. The summer “quarter” is reserved for summer school and vacation.
Does this fly in the face of what we know is best practice? You bet it does! We know that mental retention is influenced by “meaningfulness”. When information is compellingly meaningful we pay attention to it. When information is current and relevant we pay attention to it. When information affects our ongoing work we pay attention to it. Postponing the reflection and analysis of spring assessment data until late August treats these data as irrelevant to our teaching and learning.
We know that August is “ramp up time” for the start of a new school year. The scant time in our August in-service days is loaded with getting classes, classrooms, and new colleagues ready for Game Day – the first day of school. Inserting data analysis into the week before school starts leaves every teacher in the room wishing they were somewhere else getting ready for Game Day. Analysis of SY 21-22 data the week before Game Day is lip service to data analysis. Administrators and teachers alike know this for what it is – not meaningful and not productive.
The Fifth Quarter – Oh, the good we could do with time outside the school year calendar. First, a fifth quarter is outcome-based not time- or place-based. Work time can begin at 9:00 or later. Work place can be at school or not – how about a coffee shop. Shorts and sandals or whatever is the garb of the hour. We know how to do remote and work from home and this fits well into a fifth quarter.
The critical attributes are the reflection upon our work and the analysis of our data each directed at an informed planning for the next school year. In our small, rural school, fifth quarter should mean a reflection and data analysis on a student-by-student basis resulting in an informed plan for each student’s teaching and learning in the next school year.
Fifth Quarter For All – The fifth quarter is all about school responsibility and accountability. It applies to all school faculty and staff. Food service, cleaning and maintenance, transportation, guidance and counseling, athletics and activities and arts – every facet of the school enterprise benefits from fifth quarter work. We focus so much attention upon teaching and learning that we tend to ignore the other necessary work that makes a school function with efficiency and effectiveness. Fifth quarter review, consideration and design improves the next year’s work of every school worker. Too often it takes a seismic event to change practices in transportation, food service, and maintenance. Instead, allow thoughtful and timely review and consideration change the design of that work.
Commitment to a Fifth Quarter – School boards need to commit dollars to the fifth quarter; the boards are buying professional time. Administrators need to commit responsibility and accountability to the fifth quarter; making time and resources available and engaging with teachers in the reflection and analysis. And at the end of the fifth quarter, the administration is responsible for ensuring that the quarter’s work shapes teaching and learning in the fall of the new school year.
Even though review, reflection and design are inherent in teaching, if they are not explicitly constructed in the school calendar, they fall to the wayside of passing time. And, then we wonder why one school year feels like the same old, same old of the previous.