The Franklin Reporter & Advocate Eight Villages, One Community
District teachers will be able to spend more time teaching and less time planning curricula with the help of a $200,000 state grant.
Franklin was one of 18 school districts across the state sharing in nearly $2 million in grants from the state Department of Education.
The Teacher Climate and Culture Innovation Grants are designed to “aid districts in reducing administrative paperwork and streamlining other tasks that pull educators away from the classroom,” according to a press release.
“Teachers have one of the most important and challenging jobs in our society, playing an integral role in the lives of young learners and setting them on course for lifelong success,” Gov. Phil Murphy said in the release. “Doing our part to uplift our educator workforce not only signals our appreciation of their hard work, but it also directly benefits our students.”
Schools Superintendent John Ravally said the district is “pleased” to have received the grant.
“We will utilize these funds to support the work of teachers and instructional coaches who will collaborate to develop ready-made, exemplar lesson plans for the new elementary literacy curriculum, which was launched earlier this year,” he said. “These ready made lesson plans will then be accessible to all teachers of this subject district wide, and can be modified for those individual teacher’s needs.:
“In keeping with the purpose of the grant, these sample lessons will allow individual teachers to reclaim time spent on lesson preparation, allowing them to focus their attention on classroom instruction and in turn feel more satisfaction in their chosen profession,” Ravally said.
Ravally noted that this is the second competitive grant the District has received this year.
Acting Commissioner of Education Kevin Dehmer said in the release that “We know that in order to attract and retain quality teachers, we need to help school districts foster a positive climate and culture in the workplace. Our goal is to work with school districts to discover those practices that can reduce administrative bureaucracies, streamline operations, and give educators more time to focus their efforts where they can have the greatest impact: the classroom.”
According to the release, the Teacher Climate and Culture Innovation Grant Program will support schools with efforts such as:
- Developing policies and procedures designed to streamline administratively burdensome aspects of the teacher-evaluation process;
- Leveraging Artificial Intelligence technology to assist with functions such as outside communications and lesson planning;
- Creating a “library” of ready-made instructional materials and model lesson plans that other teachers can readily access, thereby reducing the time educators spend exploring and researching such materials for their lessons; and
- Moving away from weekly lesson planning, where teachers submit lesson plans every week for an administrator’s review, toward submitting unit plans that achieve the same goal but may be submitted every several weeks instead.
The other Somerset County school district receiving a grant was Hillsborough, which was awarded $199,410.
