Today's professional development day

Today is one of the most valuable days of the year - a full-faculty, internal professional development day.

We began with an hour tutorial on using Google calendar. Heather Tega, Assistant to the Head, lead the faculty through managing privacy settings, creating and sharing events, how to use the calendar system to manage the shared spaces around campus such as the kitchen and library, and other topics. By spending the time to get everyone up to speed on this aspect of our recent switch to Google Apps for Education, we're creating coherent, consistent systems across the school.

Mitch then presented a professional development plan for faculty. He began by framing three large areas of work; standard professional duties, personalized professional growth, and leadership and innovation. The plan focused on the second of those topics, and built upon a document we wrote in the spring by identifying four areas for each person to identify goals within; novelty, consolidation, reflection, and making thinking/learning visible.

After a short break, the faculty participated in the See Think Wonder thinking routine, using forms of daily/weekly lesson/unit planning and reflection as the topic. Each faculty member put out either their planning materials, or reflection/documentation materials, on the tables in the art room. After 20 minutes of silent observation, during which faculty wrote notes on what they saw, thought, and wondered, we shared our ideas. This was a highlight of the day for many faculty, as they acknowledged - the opportunity to see into each others' practices, and ask questions about the why and how and what of various approaches, was a powerful experience in community trust and mutual admiration. As Griselda acknowledged, the work we do is so complicated and difficult, and the faculty at TBS work so hard to do what they do!

The morning ended with a short review of the Curriculum Review process that we'll be undertaking this year. The goal of the process is to facilitate paths of communication among the faculty, and ultimately it will lead to a revision of our curriculum that eliminates redundancies, closes gaps, repositions certain curricular elements, and ensures that students at TBS have a coherent and consistent curricular experience from early childhood through middle school. Our mapping process is built on the ideas of Heidi Hayes Jacobs, one of the leaders in the field, and will stretch throughout the year. To begin with, faculty were given the task of "forward mapping" the rest of their curriculum for this year during the afternoon; though we did "backwards mapping" during work week last June, we have revised the maps to be more specific to TBS (since the ones we used in the spring were standard templates), and increased their responsiveness to the developmental needs of children at different divisions.

Faculty then shared a lunch provided by the school at tables set up in the sunshine of the solar system!