Artifact Cover Sheet

EDAD 693 Practicum/Internship Artifact

Standard 1.0
1.1: Candidates understand and can collaboratively develop,
articulate,
implement, and steward a shared vision of learning for a school.

Activity:

Time: 2 hours

Artifact: Proposed Master Schedule for 2017/18 school year

Description: I sat down with our Lead Teacher to learn more about how the Master Schedule is created and the
process that she uses

Reflection: I knew going in that the process of creating the schedule was complicated because of my experience in
creating the Music Department schedule and contributing to the UA/RA scheduling process. However, I had limited
knowledge of what the academic/Master schedule looked like, or what went into creating it.

She shared that she starts each year with the previous years schedule and looks at what the staffing will be for the
upcoming year. Current and future staffing is what determines the schedule. For the academic schedule she keeps a
minimum of 11 sections open for each class to keep the class size below 30 students, due to our student population.
The UA/RA schedule is created in a slightly different manner, but is also determined by staffing. Foreign language
and Music classes drive the UA/RA schedule, so those classes must be entered first.

I never realized how early they start to work on the Master schedule for the next year (she begins in late
January/early February). It is a continual process of manipulating numbers up until the start of the next school year.
Over the summer the guidance department comes in once a week and handles the scheduling of any transfer
students.

Cindy also shared that there is a way to do the scheduling through Synergy, We have not used it here because she
said there would be so many exceptions to enter into the program for certain students, that she does not feel it
would be an easier process. She does think that some county schools may use Synergy to schedule, but we have not
adopted that.

She also shared how Special Ed students are tracked for their scheduling and require a different process, as well as
the Houses for academic classes and how she divides high flyer students, and students with poor attendance
between the two houses so that those more challenging students dont all fall onto one group of teachers.