Programs vs: Activities

“That was my twenty-first Christmas program.” Those were the words of a long time band parent as she came down the steps of the balcony following last week’s performance by the various choirs and bands of the high school. Sorry if you missed it. It was the best show in town Monday night.
Once again the instrumental and choral groups combined to produce a spectacular musical experience performed by hundreds of students to the delight of hundreds more parents and onlookers. A testament to the growing strength of our music programs.
And programs is what they are. Not just activities. Not just individual groups of performers putting on their best show. A show performed by students who in many cases have been involved with the programs for nearly a decade.
Be it sports or academics or arts or any human endeavor, it takes years to develop skills and learn the best ways to perform an activity. Those years should be spent developing fundamentals and building on them to a point where the time spent in the beginning stages yields dividends in performance in later years.
Your school board recognizes that we need to be investing in and developing programs with a long-range goal in mind. Programs that will yield the best results for the dollars and time invested. And best serve students.
Too often schools find themselves dependent on a strong leader who can run a great program but does not leave a legacy. The successor, unless he/she has the same talents, skill set and devotion often cannot keep the program going at its previous level of performance.
By insisting on the creation of standards and methods in all our endeavors we will free ourselves from the ups and downs resulting from changes in personnel. A new leader should be able to look to an established set of operating criteria and carry on those parts of any program that have served well in the past. And avoid problems already discovered.
Sports and other extra-curricular activities are areas where the benefits of developing and maintaining programming are easy to spot. But the lessons there can cross many areas of curriculum. Which is what defining the program of study is intended to do.
Imagine a football team with coaches who agreed to a long-range plan that began in the early grades teaching foundation skills. Imagine that the plan built on those skills over the whole of the grade school, middle school and high school years. What might be the result?
We just might have teams that would rival those of the late 1950’s that were known statewide for their success. Now translate that to any curriculum subject you like. Math, science, reading or English. The results could be the same.
Programs that built on the strengths of the best teachers/coaches that produced the best results. Programs that would continue to operate at a high level producing great results no matter who was at the helm. Programs that have determined the best methods to produce the best results and have shared those methods.
It is just those kinds of results across the whole of our education system that this board seeks to achieve. It is this result that the Professional Learning Community process can produce as it moves ahead in its work to build on the programs and activities that produce the best results.
Admission to last week’s musical program was free. But at $10 a ticket it would have been a bargain. Do yourself a favor. Plan to see it next year, even if they do charge.