What is Intervention?
Intervention was originally designed to give students extra time to either do homework or get help from teachers. Depending on the day of the week, students are able to get help on the main focus areas of English and Math. The main purpose of Intervention is improve Reading and Math skills. It is also a way for students to work on their attendance.
I bet some of you are wondering why there is no Collaboration on Wednesdays anymore.
The reason why we no longer have Collaboration on Wednesdays is because only half of the staff were scheduled to supervise and work with a class; the other half were busy collaborating (hence the name Collaboration) with their Professional Learning Communities. This meant that classes were over crowded, which made it hard for students to get help and also overwhelmed the teachers.
Teachers had meetings to resolve the Wednesday problems and came up with three options: keep things the same, changing teacher collaboration time to extra after school meetings, or late starts on two Wednesdays per month. The 3 options went to a vote, with the following results:
- Keeping things the same was Option 1 which had a 4% Yes vote
- Eliminating Wednesdays was Option 2 which had a 57% Yes vote
- Late Starts was Option 3 which had a 39% Yes vote
PC has decided to keep the Tuesday and Thursday intervention because the staff believes intervention is helping students improve grades and attendance. The smaller class sizes on Tuesday/Thursdays allow teachers to help individual students and manage intervention. Intervention will always have room for adjustments, says Intervention Coordinator Carly Jarva. PC is the first school in the district to initiate Intervention and is one of the first ones in the metro area. Although there aren't many schools locally that use the intervention process, many schools nationwide are using the technique.
An intervention possibility that may evolve is the Enrichment Program. The Enrichment Program is designed to reward students who have good grades and attendance. Students and staff have pulled together various ideas on what activities the Enrichment Program should contain. Opportunities may include guest speakers, tutoring, extra skill development, career exploration, etc.
Intervention is a bold plan instituted, in part, because of the emphasis on Professional Learning Communities. The philosophy behind this program is that EVERYONE can learn. It just takes some students a little longer and intervention from some helpful teachers.
-Jared Almsted, PCSH Webteam