Sue Collentine, Head of Lower School
Nancy Clark, Head of Upper School
Faithful readers of this blog will recall that June’s posting, the last one of the year, recounted the tremendous energy and commitment to professional development that was in the works for our teachers during the summer. Thirty-five teachers were scheduled to attend conferences and workshops all over the country. In addition, virtually every teacher in every grade and subject arranged work with Day School colleagues or local experts to expand and refine their curriculum and teaching practices.
No question about it, the summer months were packed with stimulating, challenging professional endeavors, all facilitated through the auspices of our Institute for Teaching and Learning (ITL), the Day School’s formalized approach to promoting extensive, on-going teacher training and development. The financial resources devoted to ITL work together with our teachers’ commitment to educational excellence to promote curriculum improvement, pedagogical advancement, and strategic change.
But that was summer work and calmer times. The logical and important response is “now what?” Incorporating and institutionalizing the insights from experts and the planning and strategizing with colleagues is the critical next phase of ITL work. Further, because differentiated instruction (DI) was the focus of professional development beginning in June of 2009 and continuing through the school year, we will stay the course supporting DI efforts and not lose focus or commitment to that important work. How to do all that? We have plans.
During our First Work Week, the week of faculty meetings before the beginning of school, we devoted significant blocks of time to sharing summer ITL experiences. For instance in a presentation to the whole faculty, a team of science teachers described the newly designed science curriculum in lower school and one of the teachers who attended the Mindful Schools workshopmodeled “mindfulness” with the full faculty,an approach to mitigating daily stress in the course of our busy days. Preparing such presentations not only requires the participants to organize and refine their research and conclusions, it also provides an opportunity for feedback from colleagues and discussions of interdisciplinary possibilities and applications to other disciplines or grade levels. These ITL presentations will be an on-going agenda item at faculty meetings in the months to come.
How summer work moves from theory and strategy to actual practice in the curriculum and classroom is the next critical phase. To that end, each teacher who participated in an ITL activity has been asked to write for the appropriate division head a summary of the summer work and subsequent plans for curricular integration in units of study as well as individual lessons. In the months to come, we, in our role as division heads and in our monthly meetings with individual teachers, will use these ITL reports to discuss progress and offer suggestions and guidance. Classroom visits and lesson studies will provide additional opportunities for assessing the effectiveness of plans and strategies resulting from summer research and planning,
Just as we understand that our students learn in a variety of ways, we know that for the teachers no single, specific professional development plan would be appropriate for all. We also know that mandating one learning activity over another is often of limited value. So, in addition to teachers sharing information and excitement about summer work, David Jackson and we division heads used First Work Week sessions to identify the intersection of individual professional goals and “community commitments.” For Day School teachers the shared priorities of differentiating instruction and incorporating diversity and multiculturalism into the curriculum are ongoing commitments and the subject of the upcoming year’s in-house professional development. Concurrently, teachers will pursue interests in a wide variety of areas related to their teaching. The combination builds an environment of powerful professional learning, a quality of the school that faculty refer to as essential to their lives as teachers. As we put these new learnings to practice, we will continue to keep you informed of why and how these insights will impact our curriculum. Our hope is to continue fueling the momentum that we’ve built over the summer to ensure an exciting and innovative learning environment for the months to come.
