As a colleague pointed out to me, with larger classes sizes looming due to budget cuts, its a good thing our school district arranged for training this school-year in WBT. How else are we going to control our larger classes?

Of course not all teachers feel the same way about WBT. There is a tense relationship around staff development between the teachers' union and the administration in my school district. The union objects to time required to implement newly learned skills or programs, the lack of follow-up staff development, and the lack of a long-term plan for implementation. The administration is trying to make everyone better teachers and is frustrated by the uncooperative behavior of the union executive board.

What I like about WBT is that I can implement it without purchasing any materials, and that on-going support is provided in this online environment. I especially appreciate the free e-books I can refer to as I continue to implement WBT. Finally, I appreciated Chris Biffle's comment at our staff development that no administrator should ever mandate implementation of WBT. I really appreciate being able to implement this program without the pressure of having my implementation monitored.

Hi there jbass!
Im interested to hear how your year/WBT implementation went. Also wanted to see if you needed any other support? I know first year WBT is filled with wonders, aha's, highs & lows (hopefully mostly highs;) can you give us an update?
andrea

This is my first year with WBT and it's going very well. I'm using the Scoreboard, Class Rules, Practice cards (white and purple), Class-Yes, Hands and Eyes, Lines-Lines-Lines, Seat-Seats-Seats, Papers-Papers-Papers, Super Speed 100 for Sight words in reading and Super Speed 1000. With a very low Second Grader, I used Super Speed numbers. I haven't been able to get the Super Improvers Wall up and running to my satisfaction.