Crossroads Preparatory Academy, Kansas City | Fees, Rankings, Address, Admission, Vacancies, Reviews & More

My perspective is a bit different as I am writing it based on my first day ever teaching in a K12 school and more specifically as a substitute teacher. I am violating professional ethics as sharing criticism outside approved channels is viewed as extremely unprofessional, but I feel public discussion is a worthwhile endeavor.

First whichever administrator decided study hall to be a good idea has probably not been in a classroom since 2005 and most likely it has its roots in DC. On the surface, study hall makes sense as it gives low income students the opportunity to get individualized attention that cannot happen in a regular classroom (higher income students could theoretically afford not to ride the bus and could get help after school). The problem is that study hall can easily decay into a chaotic mess with students mindlessly killing the time however they can. This criticism is not specific to Crossroads as any school offering study hall faces this issue in the age of smartphone.

Second, “warm body” substitute teaching feels all too common at Crossroads. If it is known that a sub is needed more than 24 hours in advance, the instructor of record should provide the ordinary lesson plan to the sub. If a substitute, who has training in instructional methods, cannot follow the lesson plan it probably means that the lesson was not given enough thought and students are probably not learning the material effectively to begin with. I get that only 20% of sub positions are filled right now with the pandemic, but having solid lesson plans can dramatically improve the working conditions for subs and make it more likely someone will accept lower wages than fast food to do what they love.

Third, it is telling when only 1/3 of the class roster even bothers to show up. A common complaint I heard from students was that the material is not broken down enough, which all but kills the internal motivation necessary for students to succeed. It would be a good investment to have all the educators sit down and brainstorm prerequisite skills. For example, interpreting scientific charts requires familiarity with plotting coordinate pairs. Teach students the patterns of education such as the expectation that the thesis statement be the last sentence of the first paragraph and that it restates the question being asked.

Finally, there are a number of poor architectural choices in the building. Add locking doors to the supply closets of lab rooms so a teacher is not forced to choose between preventing horse play and monitoring the door to prevent walkouts. Teachers should not have to eat lunch with their students, especially without food preparation space in the classroom as this severely limits what teachers can eat. Furthermore, this forces students to form closer social bonds with classmates making it harder to keep them on-task for class. It is also bad practice to make students eat in rooms also used for labs as it goes against all safety rules.

I recently photographed Crossroads Prep and was extremely impressed by the staff and how much they care about their students. Very well run school.