The Annual Pre-1st Day Training We All Do
I would be remiss to not mention the way that the Academy of Irving ISD has laid out their campus training the week before school starts. I’ve seen so many of these weeks that are ineffective that it is actually not funny. Time wasted, teachers with eyes glazed over and sessions that are so lacking in focus that not even an appropriate prescription can provide a reasonable fix.
Angela Stevens, ITS at the Academy writes:
Last week I ranted a bit (and a little bit more) about some of the recent staff development sessions I participated in (and by participate I mean sat through), so when planning our campus days I wanted to do just the opposite.
When planning staff development I think it is important to collaborate with others, get various perspectives, give participants choices and allow participants time to work hands-on, discuss and reflect — so, this is what we had in mind when laying out our staff development framework. We decided to use a wiki again because we got such positive feedback from our new teacher training.
I had the chance to drop by briefly and had hoped to grab a little bit of footage - only to get pulled away by blood borne pathogens (figure THAT out without context!). Needless to say, I would encourage you to check out the wiki that they created, browse the content and see what you think about this campus created staff development. Ineffective staff development REALLY irritates me, so it is refreshing to see it done well.