Professional development is fundamental to the continued growth of teachers and other school staff members, ensuring that students benefit from having the best trained workforce in our schools, say experts involved in teacher training world wide.
These programs, experts say, also promote professionalism and a sense of scholarship within the teaching community.
Vineland Public Schools embraces that philosophy and regularly plans diverse and robust training programs for its staff.
On Oct. 5, a day-long series of more than 80 workshops and programs was held jointly with the state Department of Education’s Cumberland County office.
The theme of the day was “Strengthening the Foundation for Student Success.”
With the Small Learning Communities initiative moving closer to reality, the workshops at the high school level focused on SLC development in the eight content areas, teaching in blocks, common planning time and introduction to advisories.
Sessions for preschool teachers and assistants focused on using data to drive the curriculum, teacher resources to support diverse learners, and using prop boxes to enhance language literacy development in inclusion classrooms.
For grades K-5, there was a diverse and dynamic set of workshops that ranged from preparing children for learning in a formal classroom setting, to math (“number stories” and differentiation of instruction to address Higher Order Thinking Strategies), and also to KidBiz training, language arts literacy and identifying staff development needs through grade level review of language arts literacy curriculum.
There was also science “kit” training for teachers new to specific grade levels.
At the middle school level, there was intense focus on math training, plus instruction on KidBiz/TeenBiz and the LEADS program.
All staff members also attended a session on advisories that is a component of the district’s looming Small Learning Communities Initiative.
There were also a wide variety of Cumberland County in-service programs, including “stomping out obesity” for K-8 health and physical education teachers; managing students with seizures, and the incident command system, for K-12 nurses; the Destiny Automation System for K-8 librarians and assistants and a session on dealing with the problem of harassment, intimidation and bullying for K-5 Quest (life skills) teachers.
A workshop for K-8 art teachers was held at the Philadelphia Art Museum.
All playground and cafeteria aides attended sessions on child abuse, bullying and violence prevention; clerical staff learned about proper postal regulations from a representative of the Vineland Post Office; special education staff participated in a full-day workshop on strategies for working with students with developmental disabilities; child study teams and occupational/physical therapists joined speech department staff in learning the “ABC’s of Autism” and “Beyond Differentiated Instruction”; child study teams from the SUCCESS program received insight into the workings of the juvenile justice system and interpreters attended grade-level content workshops to hone their skills.