These questions will guide participation in our Blog
(remember, you can post more than once):
1.
What are
your thoughts about effective professional development strategies? Describe a
professional development opportunity that led to your adoption of new teaching
practices.
I am not a classroom teacher
but have assisted in several classes as a mentor, speaker, and teacher’s aide. I
am currently teaching substance abuse prevention in our schools and I really
like it.
My thoughts on effective professional development strategies are as
follows. I will use an example to convey my thoughts I recently received a
grant of 12000.00 for substance abuse prevention for my county. I decided to
invite a group of people that included teachers, parents, and youth to the
table to discuss what would be the best and effective strategy for the use of
these funds. One idea was to develop a Substance
abuse prevention coalition that would include youth and adults, another was to
bring trained people to help educate the group on drugs trends, evidence based curriculum
and to provide the opportunity to attend the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of
America (CADCA) conference.
After attending the (CADCA) conference
several off us realized that in order to better serve our community or our
youth we needed to be trained effectively with the right strategies and tools in
order to incorporate the curriculum tested at the conference. The curriculum's
like HALO designed for children ages 3 to 5. Second Step Middle School and Too Good
for Drugs was for high school students. Through
this professional development opportunity we now have a very active Substance
Abuse Prevention Coalition, five curriculum's for our schools and tech support
& training; we are currently training our health teachers, counselors and
youth to implement them in our schools. With that said my thoughts on effective
professional development strategies are, provide the opportunity if you can teachers
really like when you bring them new ideas or ways to incorporate their teaching
practices.
2.
What made
this professional development opportunity effective from your perspective?
Being able to attend the CADCA Conference with several of my teachers and
two high school students was great! They had a great deal to say about the
conference and the experience. From my perspective, it gave us all something a
little different than just attending facility senate and typical Math, Reading
and English workshops. This was an opportunity to look at professional
development from a substance abuse, treatment, and very modern digital side. The
youth also walked away with a new campaign to try at their school.
3.
What is the PD strategy or strategies you plan
to use in your Technology Integration Initiative?
I am already using several things with my youth team, we use poll
everywhere, Go to meetings, and my favorite Skype. Our latest adventure is
working with our AP Government teacher to do everything on www.edmodo.com.
Edmodo is a blogging tool that we are using for homework, chats, and research
project much like this one. Our goal is to see if we can successfully integrate
other teachers to try it.
4.
How will this strategy or strategies help you
achieve the outcomes for your TI Initiative?
For my TI initiative I will help integrate Edmodo into the classrooms on
a regular basis. I will do this by providing information to teachers like
general blogging questions, asking them to share homework ideas, designing their
blog and adding their groups of choice. I will begin by working with the
teachers during their planning period any chance we can this may be a little
difficult due to all our snow days. I
think that by creating a personal account first teachers can work with this
tool at their leisure and then incorporate it into their classes however they
see fit.
5.
What will
you need to do to provide leadership to successful professional
development (here you might think back on the results and your analysis of your
Leadership Assessment and/or the
resources/challenges present in the context for delivering professional
development)?
I
plan on taking the lead or at least at first and assisting me will be our AP
Government teacher. Once the group is formed then I will let the teachers move
on into teaching others if they are comfortable doing so. I plan on being available
in case they need any assistance. This is also a tool I plan to use to send
updates on drug trends, trainings, and coalition meeting reminders. Everyone
wins.
Please also share any literature or resources you are using
to refine your focus and develop your plan. I will use:
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic.”
― Arthur C. Clarke
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