Today the teachers gathered together for their first day
of in-service, in preparation for “Back to School Night” on Sunday evening,
August 17, for Early Childhood and
Elementary school, “Meet the Teachers” for Early childhood on Monday, August
18, and finally the first day for everyone on Tuesday, August 19. The lunchroom was filled with excitement and
good cheer as old friends touched base about the summer and new arrivals were
convivially incorporated. As feelings of
enthusiasm continued, the teachers got down to real work. This week before school starts has been set
aside for classroom preparation, lesson planning, collaborative sessions, but
most of all, to introduce and evaluate professional development initiatives
that will make for better education for all of our children.
This year all divisions are focusing on “Making Thinking Visible.” This educational approach seeks to train
students to think more often and more critically, and to become more
accomplished problem solvers, by demonstrating to the students, exactly what
takes place when one “thinks” about a problem, an issue, a puzzle or conundrum. This approach attempts to show the students
more clearly what steps are actually involved in the thinking process, so that
they will be better at applying the procedures to all types of learning
situations. It is truly a skill that
will serve them well for the rest of their lives, both in and out of
school. All of the various divisions
have been working on applying the methodology in ways that are relevant to
them.
I am also encouraging an initiative called Appreciative Inquiry, introduced to me
by Charna Schubert, which seeks to
change the culture – the atmosphere, the morale - of a given group of
employees. This approach was first used
in the industrial and sales world to increase output and customer
satisfaction. Many fortune 500 companies
have gone through the process. It is now
being used to make schools more productive, by drawing on the inner core of
strength of the educational institution.
By determining what works well and why it works, employees can build and
strengthen their workplace. Appreciating
everyone’s contributions and establishing an atmosphere in which they can
thrive and rise to their potential can successfully turn a culture of
negativity into one of positive energy and output. It allows for employees to work
collaboratively to “dream”, “design”, and realize the institution’s
“destiny”. We began the day with a
modified version of the process to introduce the concept and get the teachers
thinking positively about change. Rivki
Wiener, our much acclaimed second grade teacher, came up with an appropriate
catch phrase to describe this initiative – “gratitude attitude!” Rivki was also the creator of our acronym,
IKaRR
One of the highlights of the day was a presentation by
Allison Sheppard on technology. She went through some basics on operating our
new computers and offered some trouble shooting hints for us. She also took us on a whirlwind tour of
google apps that we can use – everything from flipped classrooms, to creating
you tube videos to setting up blogs. It
was enlightening and peaked everyone’s curiosity. Allison has generously offered to work with
people individually to help hone their own skills.
There was still time to do some team building activities
and to enjoy a delicious lunch prepared for us by Sandra Osdoba. It was a day of bonding and hard work.
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