I’m a firm believer in teachers helping their own, and I sure wish our professional development days were much the same. Having said that and being a new department head, I figure I have to walk the walk.
This year we have had three department meetings where we have taught one another with the following sessions:
- Socratic Seminars in the Classroom,
- the Thesis Statement and multiple levels of depth,
- Best Practices for teaching To Kill A Mockingbird, and
- the Summary Paragraph.
We have also started a year-long conversation regarding our department’s philosophy about vocabulary.
On Monday we have another meeting where we will look at the students with failing grades to see what is the major cause (which may allow us to help one another with some interventions), and then another teacher and I will share what we learned at a standards-based grading workshop we attended. When I put together the hand-out for the session on grading, I’ll post the major points in another post.
No matter how the standards-based grading session goes, I think The Science Goddess and The Repairman will be proud of me for starting the conversation.
