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CLASSMATE 1

In order to understand the creative change implemented at my current position, I will provide a brief overview of the one the process that takes place in the office. At my current job at the Area Health Education Center (AHEC), we provide free tobacco cessation opportunities to the public. We provide free counseling, through our facilitators, and free nicotine replacement therapy (NRT, patches, gum, lozenge). Once the facilitators have counseled our clients and the necessary documents have been filled out by the client, the facilitator puts in the request for us to send them NRT.

This is where the process got confusing. I started working in this department on March of this year, so I was new to the job. I noticed how facilitators would submit their requests via email, which was always different from each other. This created confusion and often would lead to mistakes. Some facilitators would include the attached forms in the email, while others did not. Some facilitators did not include the course information or other details. It was not clear whether to send the NRT to the client or to the facility. We would have to contact the facilitator for clarification, which would cause delays in the process.

I brought this up to my supervisor and made suggestions on how to improve the process. After having the meeting with her, we decided on a more clear and uniform way in which all facilitators entered the NRT request. All facilitators were provided an excel spreadsheet where they must enter the course, dates, location, where and who to send the NRT, and the kind and amount of NRT.  Having this creative change implemented greatly facilitated my job and streamlined the process. The facilitators also found the form helpful.

In this instance, the person (myself) found that the current system for NRT was not consistent and not clear. The team and I brainstormed and came up with a more consistent and clear method (process) to better streamline the NRTA requests. This in turn has helped facilitators to enter all the necessary data in one place, it has provided us clear instructions on the request, and provided a uniform process for all facilitators to follow. This new process can be easily taught to new incoming personnel.

 

Reference:

Puccio, G., Mance, M., & Murdock, M. (2011).  Creative leadership: Skills that drive change. SAGE.

 

CLASSMATE 2

 my role as an assistant principal at a large, public, comprehensive high school, I am often charged with examining processes and working with groups to implement needed or directed change.  In education, I believe changes are often reactive in response to an issue and, as a result, the creative element comes in the form of the solutions rather than the process.  Puccio, Mance, & Murdock (2011)  identify solutions to problems as a part of creative change. 

One such issue I am currently in the middle of is how to address the teaching shortage we are experiencing.  As one of 9 high schools, we are short-staffed and are overburdening the teachers, particularly special education teachers. My school was using a co-teaching model to meet the needs of students identified with learning disabilities. A co-teaching model means there are 2 teachers – one core subject general education teacher and one special education teacher – and a cap of about 10% of the students in the class are receiving special education services. Over the last 5 years, the teacher-to-student ratio continued to increase to the point where all of the co-teaching classes were comprised of about 80% of students receiving special education services. With percentages at that level, it is no longer a general education class according to district and special education guidelines.  As a result, the general education students and the students receiving services were typically behind the same classes that were not co-taught.  Additionally, the general education teacher in the co-taught classes were burning out because students with 504s or other needed educational services were often placed in the co-taught class and they were often only one of two people in their department who did the co-teaching leading to frustration among department members.  

The funding for having more special education teachers is not a possibility so we had to look at a different approach hence initiating the change. The end product is the model for special education delivery we are implementing this school year. I am the leader (the person) in this instance since I oversaw both special education and the master schedule so I started investigating various special education delivery models. Ideally, a team would do this but teachers are already stretched very thin. The process that involved the team is when I presented my findings to the administrative team, the special education team, the school department chairs, the building leadership team.  The process included time for feedback and refining how this would look, what professional development needed to happen, and communication to our parents and our feeder schools.  We are receiving pushback from a few general education teachers who have not had to take care of students receiving special education in more than a few years.  If I had to do this over again, I may take more than just one semester to plan it but I I felt this was imperative for our students in their access to the general education curriculum and to try to keep teachers from burning out so quickly.

Reference:

Puccio, G., Mance, M., & Murdock, M. (2011).  Creative leadership: Skills that drive change. SAGE