By Rohan Anne, Staff Reporter
On March 15, an eager group of parents, students and community members gathered in the Conestoga auditorium for the first meeting of the TESD Action Teams, district-formed groups working together to create initiatives for TESD’s future.
The action teams are split to cover the different initiatives of change, curriculum, equity, mental health, safety, sustainability, engagement and faculty support. Led by administrators, the teams started meeting in mid-March, and will continue weekly through the end of April to create their initiative plans for the coming year. Christopher Brown, an English teacher involved with the Curriculum Action Team, believes that the teams focus on student outcomes.
“The TESD Action Teams focus on different problems to improve student outcomes and achievement,” Brown said. “One goal for the Curriculum Action Team is to create an inclusive learning environment and have multiple pathways for student success, which is important because success is different for everyone: it’s not always a test.”
The formation of the TESD Action Teams began in 2014 with the District Strategic Plan, a school board-approved education plan for TESD’s future education. Five years later, the district gathered feedback from the T/E community in hopes of creating a plan to reflect the different aspects of education. Due to the pandemic, teams were only allowed to start their planning process in the spring of 2022. Senior Roy Wu was part of the first meeting for the Curriculum Action Team where the group set their team’s goals.
“We went over what the previous action committees did before and the overall mission (of the action team),” Wu said. “We then discussed how to change the curriculum style so that there is a basis for how students can transition from high school to adulthood.”
These community action teams will work to breathe life into each of TESD’s future goals through a five-stage strategic planning process taking place over six weeks. The teams are to analyze their given strategy from the Strategic Planning Committee, gather information related to their team goals, brainstorm ideas to solve problems, create a final initiative and finalize the action plan under a strict budget.
The Mental Health Action Team started brainstorming ideas for developing their action plan during their first meeting where they discussed implementing youth programs that teach about mental health and have students practice certain aspects like mindfulness and focus. Junior Neeladri Nag believes that brainstorming is the most important part of the planning process.
“Creative problem solving is the most important because we have a rich group of individuals involved in the action teams including parents, teachers and students, and everybody brings forward a unique creative outlook toward issues,” Nag said. “Meshing all these ideas together and creatively finding ways to solve these problems is extremely important and is one of the core reasons these action teams are as successful as they have been.”
Student participants will attend the action teams planning sessions to provide student perspective and collaborate with other action team members, which Nag believes is one of the core reasons student involvement in the TESD Action Teams is important alongside the fact that students themselves are directly affected by these changes.
“The students have to give their perspective because they are the ones at school every day,” Nag said. “Students have to be part of the planning process to make sure that these resolutions will fit the student body like a glove, because that is the overall goal.”
Rohan Anne can be reached at [email protected].
