Professional Development

Last year my school moved from a small building with two teachers per grade level to a large building with three or four teachers per grade level.  In that transition, we hired many more staff members, and moved from a one story building to a two story building.  Needless to say, last year was a tough year that included a lot of changes.  

Because of all of the changes we were going through, the amount of staff collaboration and professional development activities seemed to decrease.  We were simply trying to survive the move and learn all of the new procedures.  Now that we are situated in the new building and have procedures and routines mastered in the new building, I am looking forward to more staff collaboration and professional development opportunities next year. 

Classroom teachers also began teaching writing in the classroom last year.  Because of the other changes in the building, we did not have the staff bonding over writing as Regie Routman suggests her in book, Writing Essentials.  I believe this year is the year that we should begin to implement professional development sessions to writing.  This would provide teachers and opportunity to learn from other teachers about the best ways to teach writing.  We could each bring writing samples and learn about where students have come from and where we need to prepare students to go.  I also think that we would be able to bond as a staff better by doing some writing activities where teachers are told to write on a specific topic or given a free write time and then discuss what we noticed.  Some of these ideas were discussed in Writing Essentials.