Curriculum Overview |
2010 - 2012 Professional Development Trainings and Activities Purpose: Teton County School District # 1 is committed to providing all staff research based and effective quality professional development. The National Staff Development Council, (NSDC) a leading educational organization whose purpose is to “ensure that every educator engages in effective professional learning every day so that every student achieves,” forms the basis of TCSD#1 definition, standards and assessment of professional development. Professional Development in TCSD #1 has been designed to serve as a framework establishing a coherent system based upon the goals of the TCSD #1 Strategic Plan. This system will create a culture grounded in adult proficiency that drives student achievement. “Many studies have focused on the amount of time it takes individuals to learn and use new instructional strategies at a high level of quality in the classroom. The most effective professional development occurs over a period of several years in order to support teachers’ use of the new strategies or curriculum. Depending on how different new practices are from current practices, teachers and principals may take two to three years to use new strategies consistently and with high quality.” (National Staff Development Council) Instructional Core Focus: Increases in student learning occur only as a consequence of improvements in the level of content, teacher’s knowledge and skill, and student engagement. The instructional core is about this triad of content, teacher, and student. The instructional core provides a framework for how to intervene in the instructional process to improve the quality and level of student learning. Job embedded: Time is an extremely valuable resource that is used carefully and purposefully. Staff need time to learn, implement, and adjust their learnings; staff learn the work by doing the work. Thus the concept of job-embedded is a standard for practice in TCSD #1. There are 15 teacher days (non-student contact) in certified contracts. Two days are used for parent/teacher conferences. The remaining days are used at the beginning, throughout, and at the end of the year for professional development. The following list identifies the trainings for the upcoming school year. CURRENT and ONGOING Studio Residencies K-12: CEL Job-Embedded coaching will be designed to address an additional body of knowledge specific to the work of facilitators and teacher leaders, including deepened pedagogical content knowledge, coaching, and professional development planning for their schools. The model is designed to initiate and develop collaboration among classroom and specialist teachers (e.g. ELL & SpEd). Essential Learnings: K-8 Literacy; 6-8 Math: Begin development of revised vertical alignment of student literacy and math outcomes and creation of units, assessments and instructional benchmarks. This redefines the structure and purpose of curriculum maps. Dual Immersion: Develop common process of integration to develop a deeper understanding of and ability to identify language outcomes in conjunction with content expectation. Collaborate on instructional pedagogy and implement an aligned content. Dual is now K-3. Instructional Facilitators: IFs will continue to learn both content and process of coaching, will begin walkthroughs to identify their problems of practice and cycles of inquiry around these problems. There will also be side-by-side coaching during the teacher studio residencies by the CEL consultants. Teaching American History: This cohort of K-12 teachers will migrate from content and primary source training to pedagogy through 2 day in-services through out the school year with CEL with a focus on instructional practices in reading and student engagement to access content. TCSD #1 partners with other districts in these trainings. Continuous Improvement Model: JHHS, JES and CES will have Shipley and Associate consultants work with staff for 2 days on high performing goal teams and PDSA implementation at the student level. Senior leadership will work with Shipley and Associates on the Strategic Plan.
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