Dream Organization | BrightFutures

I have always been interested in and aspiring to stay related to teaching and education. That has been my primary reason that I selected my current program of study. Most of the education research in special education has been focusing on treating special children separately from the normal children so far. However, the modern research suggests and emphasizes that special children must be made capable of working with normal children and they should not be treated separately so that they can be made capable of working with normal people in future. This not only requires to work on the capabilities of the special children but it also requires to train normal children about how to deal with the special children so that they can be included into the normal stream of people. This concept is called inclusive education. Upon completion of my education, I aspire to work in the area of inclusive education and therefore I have selected BrightFutures as my dream organization to work with. BrightFutures is dedicated to include special children into normal children by promoting inclusive education systems.

            Organizational Culture of BrightFutures

BrightFutures provide a very supportive culture not only towards the children but also towards it employees. Every employee (teacher, administrator), parent, and child is treated as part of the single family.

Basic Assumptions

The basic assumptions in the BrightFuture are that all teachers and administrators are part of a single team working towards promoting inclusive education. Parents cannot be ignored in promoting special education in order to know about the children needs to a deeper level. Good teachers are those who not only keep concern with the students’ behaviors within the school, but also approach their parents to know more about the children in details. If a teacher has some problem dealing with or understanding the issue of a student, he/she can easily approach and take support from other teachers to help him/her. Parents help reinforce the things that are taught to students at school. All teachers put extra efforts and time in knowing more and more about special students and students who do not perform well at school. All the teachers are punctual, qualified, and well trained in dealing normal as well as special students and are experts in bringing special children to the same level as of normal children. All teachers follow the rules, regulations, policies and procedures set by the school. Head of the school is always available to support the teachers in all kinds of issues they may face. School pays extra amounts to the teachers who put extra efforts and resources to reach the parents of the students or who expend on meeting the needs of the special children.

Behavioral Norms

All teachers are supportive and take care of their students. They work honestly as if they are working to help their own children. All teachers and administrators are polite, pleasant in personality and smiling all the time. If a teacher comes late, any teacher who is available takes care of his duties until he reaches. Head of the school is very supportive and always finds time to interact with the teachers, parents and children as and when needed in a very supportive and helping manner. Al teachers follow the dress code, schedule, and never break any rules and policies of the organization.

 

 

Heroes

BrightFutures has promoted a unique culture of appreciation and rewards for its employees which takes into consideration several aspects and tries to reward anyone for better contribution to the mission of the school. First of all, Heroes are the students who perform well in either academic or non-academic activities (games, physical sports etc). Then those teachers, whose students perform the best in each term are awarded appreciation certificates and titles for their best services and all teachers are always in a struggle to win those titles. Also the parents of students, teachers of school, all the students and other employees are provided the opportunity to select teacher of the year at the end of each year and all the votes are considered as equal. This teacher of the year is considered as Hero of the school for the whole year. This inspires other teachers to work harder to help achieve the organizational goals.

Interaction

Teachers have a very informal interaction structure. They can spend their spare time sitting in the common faculty room and interact with other teachers regarding any issues that interests them. This is a kind of socialization that helps teachers keep in touch with each other to ask or extend help in case anyone of them has any problems. Interaction with the Head of the school is two ways. Any teacher, student, or parent can visit physically the head of the school office during designated hours (usually school hours) to share views, discuss ideas and/or problems they may be facing. Emails, official letters, and phone calls are also sources of communication for more formal interaction. Moreover, the head of the school calls a biweekly meeting with all the teachers to discuss issues and areas of concern, however, this meeting can be called upon at any appropriate day by teachers if at least one third of the teachers think so that there should be a meeting regarding some emergent issue. The head of school also visits class rooms, faculty rooms and other offices in order to oversee the activities going on in any day schedule. A parent teacher meeting is called once in a month to discuss issues about students and parents’ suggestions and issues are taken into serious consideration if they communicate any. In addition to monthly parent teacher meetings, any teacher can visit, or call parents of a teacher for a meeting if he/she feels it important.

Organizational Structure

BrightFutures has a mix of hierarchical as well as centralized organizational structure. There is a head of the school at the top. Under the head of the school work a teaching team and an administrative team. All the teaching team members work at the same level with each other. Administrative team has a chief administrator who heads accounting, procurement, marketing, finance, and support staff. Each of the administrative team has a head e.g. head of accounting, heading of procurement, head of finance and head of marketing. Each of the heads has a team working under them. Administrative team has a hierarchical structure, while faculty/teaching team has a centralized structure.

In case of administrative decisions, head of the institution is the controlling authority and all the hierarchy reports from bottom up towards the head of the school. In case of teaching team, majority of the decisions are made by mutual consensus among the teachers but with a final approval of the head of the school.

Role of the Leader

Head of the school works as a leader of the organization who not only oversees, controls and directs several actions, but also supports and encourages initiatives by the team members. He supports, encourages, and motivates all team members to come up with innovative ideas to enhance the performance of the overall organization.

Role of the followers

Followers are not passive listeners at BrightFutures, but they have opportunities to take initiatives. They are also allowed to justify their stance on any issues and change the directions by a mutual consensus. The leader provides the opportunities to discuss new ideas or even directions from his side, and to accept or reject them based on appropriate justifications in the greater interests of the organization and its mission.

Physical Characteristics of the BrightFutures

Class Rooms

The best thing about BrightFutures school is it infrastructure. The school has 5 lecture theaters for delivery of normal presentations by teachers and students. There are 2 discussion rooms for students each with a big round table where students can sit in one big circle in order to help them for the best interaction, where they can not only see all other classmates but also the teacher. In addition, to promote small group activities, there are 3 activity rooms each with 5 round tables. Each round table has 5 chairs arranged in circle for the groups of 5 to work on different educational activities. All the class rooms are equipped with touch screen multimedia projects where students can interact with this kind of media for reinforcing different educational concepts.

 

 

sports facilities

The school has all the modern facilities for almost all physical sports like football, basketball, badminton, table tennis, athletics, cricket, and baseball etc.

Faculty Offices

Each faculty member has a private office with a table and chair for work, and an extra couch which can be used to relax in free time as well as can be used to seat other teachers and parents if they need to have a private meeting with the teacher. In addition, each office has white board where teachers can write reminders for themselves. Door displays the schedule of the teacher’s classes, visiting hours, holidays, etc. Each office comes with a personal computer and a printer to facilitate the teacher in his daily work.

Faculty Room

There is a common room for all the teaching faculty and they can sit there to relax. The faculty room has light refreshment facilities available.

Dress Code

All the teachers have to wear black pant and coat with white shirt and a black tie. All teachers must wear black office (dress) shoes.

 

 

Schedule

All the teachers must be available in the school from 9 am to 5 pm Monday till Friday. Each teacher has to teach a minimum of 3 hours each working day. In addition, teacher must be available in office for at least 2 hours for counseling and meeting with students and parents if required so.