2008-09 Professional Development
What are teachers doing on all of those professional development days?
January 2009
The beginning of a new calendar year began with a district wide meeting with Dr. Barnes in the high school theater. During the two-hour session, discussions were held on various topics, ranging from budget and procedural items to the newly completed facility study. Information was also presented as to best serve struggling students. In the afternoon, a multitude of meetings were held to update and enhance staff skills. The counselors and nurses met to discuss serving our students in need of assistance, language arts teachers received training on the updated Accelerated Reader program, social studies teachers discussed their assessment plan, the physical education and health teachers worked on updating their curriculum, and the safety committee met to discuss potential safety issues and procedures.
November 2008
Our second annual technology mini-conference was held in November. The implementation of technology into classroom instruction is the future of teaching and learning. The teachers were surveyed prior to this day to establish the areas of greatest need. From this information, a day full of technology sessions were offered from which teachers attended three. Topics include: the use of interactive "clicker" training to monitor student understanding, word processing, data base, and spreadsheet use, becoming more familiar with the capabilities of their laptop computers, online course work website development, Powerpoint as an instructional tool, exploring curriculum resource websites, creating classroom multimedia projects, digital imaging, and technology based evaluation tools.
October 2008
In October, the teachers worked primarily on updating their curriculum guides throughout the district. Our goal is to expand the curriculum guides with specific topic level objectives, making them more usable on a daily basis. When completed, the guides will serve well in ensuring that new teachers to our district and multiple teachers instructing the same course will align their instruction more closely, which will benefit our students. A representative from the Department of Education worked with our elementary teachers on reading instruction initiatives, the special education teachers worked on IEP development, and training took place for how to make best use of our social studies materials.
September 2008
The professional development day in September was filled with activities for teachers across the district. The day began with a district-wide meeting to discuss the updating of our curriculum guides across the district to make them more usable on a daily basis. The numerous meetings that encompassed the remainder of the day included grade and subject level curriculum meetings, laptop and electronic grade book training, updates for our emergency response teams, physical education and health curriculum meetings, work on curriculum guides and vocabulary instruction, and the opportunity for teachers to discuss instruction between buildings.
August 2008
The professional development days at the beginning of the school year focused around this year's theme of "Trust ... Commitment ... Precision ... Excellence". As these are qualities that must be exhibited by the Navy's fighter jet performance team, the Blue Angels, they served as background for our identification badges this year. Our goal is to exhibit these same qualities in our everyday work with students.
The two days of meetings began with Dr. Barnes, superintendent, addressing the entire staff on district-wide issues facing all of us this year. Multiple sessions focused around the implementation of our new math series in grades 3-8 and updates in grades K-2 and 9-12. Beginning this year, all of our teachers have a laptop computer for their use in expanding the use of technology in their classrooms. Training was provided to utilize these tools effectively. Additional meetings were held for special education teachers, activity sponsors, and building level discussions for the year to come.
