While the kids had a day off . . .

Today, December 2nd, South Kingstown High School students enjoyed a middle-of-the-week vacation while teachers came to school for one of their two professional development days. Professional development (PD) days are scheduled so that teachers, administrators and support staff can have a significant chunk of time to address pressing issues in the district or building. Today’s PD day was divided into three parts: for the first part of the day, teachers met departmentally; we extended common planning time which normally takes place for 45 minutes on Wednesday mornings to 90 minutes (see the blog entry from 6/18/09 for more on CPT). After we briefly met as a group for time to review the rest of the day and provide some necessary background information, teachers spent time learning a new online grading system, one which has the capacity to allow parents to access teacher gradebooks for their child. While there are no immediate plans to implement the parent component, we wanted to give teachers a primer on the system and have them consider using it as a way to more efficiently track student performance. The final segment of the day was spent examining different sets of student achievement data such as grade distribution charts which graphed student achievement by teacher, course and department using first quarter grades. Teachers also were provided a list identifying at-risk students as defined by grades, attendance and/or discipline. Teachers also could view formative assessment data that we have gathered in the fall through assessing ninth and tenth graders using the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) assessment which provides specific data on student strengths and weaknesses in reading and math. We asked teachers to examine the data and identify trends in student achievement and develop instructional strategies to address the trends in student performance. This type of work, examining ways to improve classroom practice, is already a central component of teachers’ lives through their TLC meetings (I wrote about TLCs on 10/9/09). At the end of the day, we met to provide teachers an opportunity to assess the effectiveness of the day. In reviewing the evaluations, it was clear that teachers loved the extended CPT time and most were very excited and impressed by the on-line grading software. Teachers were more critical of the module where they examined student data, identifying concerns about the efficacy of the MAP data (is it accurate data since many kids don’t try?) as well as pointing to lack of student effort on homework and attendance being major factors in student performance which makes it difficult to examine instructional strategies to push kids forward. Of course the most positive comments were reserved for our wonderful Parent Teacher Group, who served homemade soup, sandwiches and dessert for our lunch break!