It's been a few weeks since my last post. During the past few weeks, I've been engaged with staff on whole staff professional development, collective bargaining labor negotiations, testing out a new observation/evaluation model, and working with educational leaders on selection of staff.
With the whole staff professional development, my administrative partner, the principal, and I worked with staff and a staff leadership team to engage the faculty in workshops on the following topics:
Excellence - what is excellence in a teacher? In addition to looking in the mirror, since I am fortunate to work with excellent faculty members, we took a look at the attributes and skills and themes and behaviors of excellent teachers.
We also looked at digital offerings through the Discovery Education Network - what an impressive array of current digital technologies!
Marzano's team's research on Classroom Instruction That Works contributed to a card game, inspired by John Antonetti and allowed the faculty to check out, discuss, and categorize the 9 high yield strategies that Marzano's meta-analytical research described.
Our excellent faculty team shared an overview of the new direction in professional evaluation and coaching and growth based upon the Danielson Frameworks
All in all it was an energizing and action packed professional experience that was well received and highly regarded by staff!
In addition, the teacher's association and the Board of Education have been involved in highly professional and respectful labor negotiations!
It's been a typically busy few weeks; and as I reflect, I find daily value in leadership, coaching, mentoring, and professionalism. Public education is rich, robust, dynamic, and challenging all in one.
