Earlier this week, it was announced that Greene County School District was selected as one of the first-year recipients for the new Teacher Leadership and Compensation Grant from the state.

Superintendent Tim Christensen talks about his reaction when he found out the state had picked them to be one of the first school districts to receive this grant.

“Extremely excited about the district being selected.  A lot of hard work went into that from a lot of people-teachers, administrators, parents (and) school board members-so really excited that all that hard work paid off.”

He adds that the goal of the program is to give teachers more of a leadership role in education so that they have more of an impact in student learning.

Christensen says that their plans for the program includes 27 teacher roles.  There will be 15 model teachers that are in the classroom 100% of the time and other teachers will observe them and their teaching style.  Another five teachers will be curriculum leaders.  Christensen comments that these teachers are also in their classrooms 100% of the time but take additional curriculum training to instill in their classrooms.

The other two positions will require the district to hire replacement teachers for them.  There will be four mentor teachers which means they will be in their classrooms teaching for 50% of the year and the other 50% will be spent coaching other teachers during the school day.  The final three positions are instructional coaches which are teachers who are not in the classroom teaching to students at all but rather spending time with other teachers to improve overall teaching and student learning.

Christensen points out some challenges the district will face before the start of the 2014-15 school year and when this program is suppose to be in full effect.

“It is going to be a lot of work to go through the process of having teachers apply for these positions, doing interviews, determining what teachers to hire and then looking to hire teachers outside to fill the positions that these teachers previously had.  So a lot of work to be done moving forward and that is a challenge because it is a pretty short turnaround time to get this off the ground and running.”

State House Representative Chip Baltimore tells Raccoon Valley Radio that he believes they’ve set up the program with enough funding that it can someday turn into a self-sustaining program for the foreseeable future.