local colleges and universities should become extensions of each other. Maximum use should be made of the newest techniques in audio visual instruction including closed circuit TV. • Teacher specialists in art, music, and other curriculum areas should be used to enrich the instructional program. Personnel • Efforts should be made to recruit a staff which is enthusiastic, able, and committed to the program. This can be achieved through the democratic involvement of teachers and supervisors. • Provisions should be made for a continuous program of professional growth including payment by the Board of Education for time spent after school hours. In order to give teachers maximum time for concentration on instruction, teachers should receive a daily unassigned preparation period, and relief from all non-teaching duties. School Plan and Organization • Maximum use of the school plant should be made for a full school day, weekend and during the summer months. • Needed space and facilities should be sought in office buildings, housing projects, storefronts, etc. New schools should be located to achieve maximum integration. CONCLUDING STATEMENT This national design for the elementary school is devised to meet today's educational needs of the schools. Hopefully, the additional space, trained staff, and the budgetary resources needed to implement the design's basic guidelines will create opportunities for creative thinking and experimentation with new and modified teaching and supervisory practices; for improved school and community relationships; for new and creative use of teaching materials; for creative and effective use of personnel; for a new look at our children, their needs, and their potential for learning; and for a study and evaluation of the teaching and learning processes. The AFT does not offer the suggested design as the final and only solution to the many problems facing our elementary schools. Improvements are open-ended. No one group or one discipline is today in a position to propose final solutions. The joint effort of many related groups and related disciplines are necessary. However, since the AFT's major responsibility is to advance the cause of public education, it must continue to meet this responsibility in an active, intelligent, and forceful manner. The educational needs of our nation mandates others to join this effort. Simon Beagle, Chairman APPENDIX A RESEARCH AND EXPERIMENTATION Careful evaluation of the program as a whole from the very initiation of the program is basic to sound growth. The evaluation must be skillfully planned under the guidance of the research staff assigned and in cooperation with the school staff and trained college personnel. All resources of the Board of Education, colleges and universities, public agencies and private grants should be used to design and conduct research. In order to effectuate the research program, one school should be designated as the Research Center. It should have as consultant an "Academy of Research" composed of outstanding experts and specialists. from the entire metropolitan community. The Research Center would serve as a clearing house for studies, explorations of new procedures and materials, and so on, and would work in close cooperation with the departments of educational research, curriculum research and child guidance. Areas of action in research with experimentation would include the following: Organization and special classes Nongraded primary Team Teaching Open-end grouping Prekindergarten Extended day in kindergarten "Bridge" classes Involvement with groups Campus school program Special community projects School-community aides Civic agencies (health, housing, welfare) Human-relations groups Special programs Camping programs (summer, sleep-away, year-round) Summer day camp program Extended school day program Community library program Special parent-community programs Welcome program (new arrivals, orientation) Summer kindergarten programs Exchange school program (teachers, parents, children) Audio-visual: closed-circuit television Audio-visual: listening-speaking laboratories Studies and projects Approaches to teaching non-English children Study of approaches to beginning reading Study of physical anomalies and the results of a correction program (with AMA) Studies of academic achievement in selected areas Studies of sequences in learning Studies of effectiveness in different patterns of preservice and inservice growth Studies of the use of programmed materials and machines in motivating learning Studies of utilization of community resources Studies relating to motivation, human relations, the effectiveness of guidance, etc. Although each of these areas of investigation has broad implications for the whole school system, nevertheless the focus imperative here is on the values pertinent to the children in the suggested program. APPENDIX B OTHER FACTORS Staff Growth The catalytic agent in moving forward any program is the staff assigned to bring into action the suggestions culled from every source. In addition to the suggestions given in the section on Personnel, the following avenues of staff growth should be emphasized: Professional Library Each school in the program should have a professional library appropriate to the size of the staff and the diversity of their problems. Foreign Language Each school should provide opportunity on an optional, voluntary basis, for staff members to learn the language spoken by many children in the school (Italian, Spanish, French, and so on). Operation Understanding Members of the staff should have the opportunity to participate in a program similar to New York's "Oper ation Understanding" (the program of supervisor visitation and teacher exchange with schools in Puerto Rico). Such a program could also be extended to sections of our own country, as the South, and to other countries. Research Clearing House Provision must be made on a planned, systematic basis for relaying to members of the staff all significant findings that emerge from studies and investigations. This relay should include not only written reports but practical demonstrations and, where pertinent, actual practice in using the findings. In essence, time and resources must be provided for a carefully developed program of staff growth that not only will give every participating teacher and supervisor the information needed for more effective performance of his responsibilities, but also will challenge his professional interest. If we accept the broad definition of the curriculum as all the experience the child has inside and outside the school, then this AFT National Design for the Elementary School is an appropriate vehicle for fulfilling this objective. |