One person can make a difference, a team can make a miracle! *

The staff and parents of South Junior High School believe that it will better meet the developmental needs of its students through teaming. In the seventh and eighth grades, two teams of five core teachers have been chosen by the principal. These core teachers include a language arts, a social studies, a mathematics, a science, and a reading teacher. In the ninth grade, she has chosen two teams of four core teachers in language arts, mathematics, American History, and science.

Students in each grade will be divided as equally as possible into two groups, then assigned to one of the teams. By "equally", we mean by gender, by academic ability and the like. In effect, for most of a student's day, his or her "world" will become smaller, to something less than 150 students. While currently, teachers do not know who a student's other teachers are, under "teaming" four or five teachers will share the same students and get to know them well.

Teachers in each core team will meet together daily. The purposes of these meetings will be many: to meet as a group with individual students, to meet with parents, to meet with professional staff such as counselors or special education teachers or social worker, or to plan interdisciplinary activities. The sole purpose of the teaming period will be to serve the needs of students. Teachers will still have a separate preparation period to plan lessons.

The educators at South believe that "teaming" will provide many advantages. Chiefly, it will better suit the developmental needs of students. It will do so by reducing isolation among educators. It will improve communication among a student's teachers. It will provide for more efficient communication with counselors, social workers, school psychologist, special educators, administrators and parents, It will permit educators to identify academic and behavioral problems earlier and to remedy them cooperatively rather than in isolation. It will reduce disciplinary problems for administrators. It will lead to regular interdisciplinary activities which will show student show knowledge is connected. It will ease the transition from sixth grade to south and from South to high school. By working daily with peers, we believe educators will improve their skills. In short, we expect that "teaming" will be more, rather than less, work; but we believe that our work with youths will be more effective and therefore more satisfying.