Impressions of The Russell Street School

The use of blogs at the Russell Street School is indeed impressive!  At its best, education is a community-wide endeavor in which all stakeholders are highly invested and engaged: students, teachers, parents and administrators alike.  The Russell Street School masterfully uses blogs to accomplish the nearly impossible feat of linking these four groups together into one interconnected web of learning.  The benefits of this accomplishment are myriad:

·      Teachers are able to communicate easily with parents regarding class goals, projects and announcements.

·      Parents are always “in the know” about what their children are studying and creating, facilitating conversations at home that keep students engaged with schoolwork.

·      Teachers easily share resources for reading, math, science, etc. with parents and students (via links on the class blog), making it easy for parents to help struggling students at home, as well as encouraging curious students to build additional knowledge and skills in their free time.

·      Students use their personal blogs to showcase their work and to reflect on their learning.  It builds confidence, boosts engagement levels and creates a permanent archive of significant learning artifacts.  Such an archive facilitates the students’ ability to make connections among the knowledge they’re accumulating in seemingly disparate subjects, as well as monitor their growth over the course of the year.

·      Administrators can easily follow what is happening in their teachers’ classrooms, providing valuable insight into student achievement and school wide trends in learning.  While it is no substitute for classroom visits or in-person conversations with teachers, it provides administrators easy access to more data when they are attempting to identify strengths, weaknesses and curricular overlap/holes. 

·      The public nature of the blogs raises the level of accountability for all community members: teachers are motivated to craft creative, engaging and meaningful lessons; students are inspired to always put forth their personal best effort; administrators are provided an easy means to knowing exactly what is happening in each of his students’ classrooms; and parents are encouraged to keep close tabs on their students’ progress.

Is this degree of interconnectedness achievable in all schools?  As home Internet access continues to grow, I do believe that most schools can start to approach Russell Street’s level of school-family connection.  One likely barrier in some communities is language: many schools serve students who do not speak English at home.  Posting blogs in multiple languages would facilitate communication with these families.  Second, I believe a significant aspect of Russell Street School’s blogging success is that every teacher, student and administrator has a blog.  The “all-in” nature of this approach is largely what makes it highly effective.