I work at a middle school in San Diego County, California. We have about 1400 students. There are about 80 certificated positions on campus including 70 teachers, 4 administrators, 2 counselors, and 1 psychologist. The classified staff of about 30 people includes instructional aides, office staff, nurse, and other personnel. Our school has been fairly successful academically. We have never been a program improvement school and our test scores have been some of the highest in the district. The school receives a great deal of outside support for children. There are before and after school programs for kids who get dropped off early or stay late at school due to parent schedules. We have social workers and other support groups on campus as well to support the variety of student needs.
Teachers are assigned to departments and grade levels. Subject departments are: Language Arts (which includes reading) or Humanities, Social Studies, Math, Science, Electives, Physical Education, and Special Education. These departments can be further divided into grade level departments. Students are organized by grade level teams of teachers who meet on a regular basis and discuss students and collaborate with counselors, administration, and other teachers. Teams of teachers include the following subjects: Math, Science, Language Arts, Social Studies, and Reading.
Example of sixth grade team structure: 3 Humanities teachers (Language Arts and Social Studies combined) and 2 Math/Science teachers. This structure holds about 180 students.
Teachers meet as teams at least twice a month. Team leaders attend a monthly meeting with the Admin Team to discuss administrative concerns and tasks as well as school-wide issues. Support teachers are also included in team meetings to communicate student concerns and support their students with special needs as best as possible. Electives and P.E. teachers do not attend team meetings but they do attend their own department’s meetings.
Our school follows an inclusion model. So, students with learning disabilities are included in regular education classrooms as much as possible. These students are provided with the best environment in which they can learn or accomplish their learning goals as established by their IEPs. Teams are supplemented with SAI (Specialized Academic Instructor) teachers and their Instructional Aides depending on the amount of inclusion students per classroom.