Professional Development
The improvement of student achievement depends upon having a strong professional community, one in which teachers, counselors, administrators, and staff work together to review student results and make changes in curriculum, instruction, and specific interventions to ensure that students succeed. In a strong professional community, educators are constantly learning—deepening their discipline-specific knowledge, increasing their instructional repertoires, and expanding their knowledge of students’ development and needs. Professional development includes many components:
Induction
Two Induction Co-Coordinators and a team of Instructional Coaches provide support for the ongoing professional development of new teachers. The Induction Program provides in-class consultation as well as two years of courses, including ETHS 202 and Studying Skillful Teaching, to new teachers.
Professional Learning Communities (PLCs)
Department chairs coordinate and manage the work of PLCs. PLCs are teams of teachers/counselors who meet on selected PD Mondays to set goals for student learning, review student work, including test results, and to plan and monitor instructional interventions.
Literacy
Each department has a plan for discipline-specific literacy to ensure that students are reading and using reading to become successful in that content area. Department chairs and instructional coaches provide professional development—workshops as well as classroom-embedded coaching.
Professional Development Mondays
Because professional development involves improving all aspects of teaching and learning, Monday afternoons, starting at 2:45 are set aside for a faculty-wide professional development, PLCs, as well as department meetings and all-staff meetings. Our faculty-wide professional development includes Studying Skillful Teaching, Race and Equity, Differentiated Instruction, Data Driven Problem Solving, and Effective Effort.
Department-Specific Workshops
To support program improvement and to strengthen both curriculum and instruction, we also provide targeted professional development workshops and on-site consultations for departments or groups of teachers in a particular program. These workshops are held during department meeting times, but some are also during the school days and teachers are provided substitutes in order to attend.