Jim McKean
With our continued growth potentials the Gilbert School District has the
capabilities to meet the needs for academic advocacy in specialized areas.
As a district we have implemented an expanded reading program in K-3;
through intense faculty work, developed and implemented effective
curricular-based evaluation vehicles in K-6; we will have a ½ FTE focused
on math teaching in K-6 this year.
My next area of emphasis is provision of writing support in the 7-12
building. In each case the classroom teachers will provide the educational
experiences and the primary teaching environment with supplementary support
from educational advocates. For example, writing skills can best be honed by
an integrated process of evaluated repetition in a variety of academic
disciplines. It is not reasonable to expect subject matter teachers with
heavy class loads to effectively emphasize rhetorical skills in addition to
their core teaching responsibilities. An advocate who assists students with
improving writing skills by reading and emphasizing linguistic structure,
application of grammatical rules, and demonstration of basic and advanced
rhetorical techniques to more effectively communicate through the written
word would strengthen all academic programs and better prepare students to
handle life experiences.
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