Minimum day professional development plan

Professional Development (PD) will be offered on the Wednesday afternoon minimum days again this year, but in a slightly different format. Teachers will be attending a summit of conference style offerings with multiple sessions to choose from on three of these minimum days including September, February and May.

Previously offered focus areas such as close reading, brain-based learning, argumentative writing will be available on a more in-depth basis to veteran teachers who will get to select their workshop. First and second year teachers will each be placed in separate cohorts to receive trainings covered by the district before their arrival.

The 40-plus middle and high school teachers new to the district this year will meet together as a cohort in the Strathmore High School library to cover previous training topics. Harmony Magnet Academy will be hosting the other sessions on their campus. Teachers in their second year with PUSD will also meet as a cohort to visit topics addressed when the district first began minimum day trainings.

In order to insure smaller group sizes and cap sessions at 30 participants, over a dozen presenters will be offering sessions. The middle school and high school instructional coaches (IC) will lead sessions on such topics as text dependent questions (TDQ), writing from sources, performance tasks, collaborative group structures, and academic conversations. Math coaches will offer sessions featuring the new math standards and the integration of calculators or Desmos. The technology media specialists will offer beginning, intermediate and advanced sessions on topics such as Google Drive, Google Classroom and Socrative.

Pathway coaches, exemplar teachers and administrators have also been tapped to offer their expertise. The same offerings will be available at the subsequent summit conferences.

The October minimum day has been set aside for assessment analysis while the November training will again be in department specific groups. For example English teachers will meet with an instructional coaches to deepen the Depth of Knowledge (DOK) for the learning activities they offer to ramp up rigor for students.

In March, Growth Mindset will be covered in department specific groups again and followed up on individual campuses in April with campus instructional coaches. Implementing more of a Growth Mindset style of thinking praises effort over accomplishment and acknowledges failure as a part of this growth cycle.

All of these trainings will feature the common thread of student engagement. During these two hour sessions teachers will experience new strategies, share activity ideas and develop a plan for incorporating them into classroom routines. Shared expertise during teacher collaborations will help to brainstorm implementation strategies.

Training with Kagan cooperative learning strategies will continue to be offered by coaches on individual campuses during Monday staff meetings. Working in groups helps to build community and give students a stronger sense of belonging. Teachers who employ collaborative strategies are often better at engaging students.

Instructional coaches continue to assist teachers with the pedagogical shifts that brain researchers assert enhances retention. Teachers are transitioning to being more of the facilitator types who provide students structure by setting clear curricular expectations and project deadlines.

Stepping back to allow more student-directed learning in an open-ended fashion often means that teachers don’t have all the answer. While initially uncomfortable for teachers who have been trained to dispense information, this can become a joint discovery process with their learners.

Good teacher instruction offers students a toolbox of learning strategies. Successful students are usually allowed more flexibility to pick the strategies that work for them while a more directive approach is often used with those that struggle.

If failure is looming for struggling students, teachers suggest that they do it the teacher way until they demonstrate success. For example, if the goal is to have students be organized when writing, than Cornell notes may help get them there. If another note-taking strategy is being used successfully, then no intervention is needed.

Students are taught specific skills and strategies when the need becomes apparent. One veteran science teacher said to a struggling student, “If you don’t have a tool then I offer this… use it until your grade comes up and you demonstrate more success.”

Using the right tool for the right job at the right time is critical for success. The district PD offerings are intended to enhance teachers’ toolkits to update their brain friendly options for student learning.