Professional Development

Fa c u l t y L e a r n i n g Never Stops

BY BOBBY MIRZAIE & DOUG MAGEE

During the summer break, all Ensworth faculty—every grade level and all subjects—engaged in professional development in pursuit of enhancing their teaching skills and knowledge.

Teachers attended online conferences or engaged in multi-week workshops and classes on a variety of topics related to remote teaching. Popular professional development courses focused on assessments and feedback, student engagement, online project design, building community and connection remotely, subject-specific remote teaching, literacy, and others. Faculty participation involved over 25 leading organizations such as Global Online Academy, World Leadership School, Ed Tech Teachers, Columbia University Teachers’ College, Center for Responsive Schools, Instructional Coaching Group, Online Learning Consortium, American School Counselors Association, LinkedIn Learning, Bureau for Education Research, Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition, Institute for Multi-Sensory Education, and many others.

At the request of a cohort of a dozen Middle School and High School teachers, Doug Magee, Jenny Krzystowczyk, and Courtney Bahr developed a course for faculty members to support online learning. The purpose of the Faculty Online Learning Course was to equip teachers with the practical tools to design teaching and learning experiences that can be adapted to meet a range of likely scenarios for the 2020-2021 school year. This two-week session was a hybrid of face-to-face and online

learning with a focus on achieving the following goals:

• Design a sustainable online learning ecosystem for face-to-face, hybrid, and/or remote learning scenarios. • Integrate digital tools to expand the boundaries of the classroom, maximize relational connectivity, and provide timely feedback for learning. • Create transparent learning pathways accessible on- or off-campus. • Share resources and best practices across divisions and establish relationships for ongoing collegial feedback and support for improvement.

Furthermore, Middle School teachers Hayley Brantley and Maurice Hopkins co-facilitated weekly conversations with K–12 faculty members on the topics related to racism, racial inequality, and injustice in the United States and strategies for supporting further learning and awareness in our school community on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Teachers engaged in discussions while

reading the following books:

• New Kid by Jerry Craft • Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America by Jennifer Harvey • Stamped: Racism, Anti Racism, and You: A Remix of the National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi.

Faculty learning will continue, both during August in-service and throughout the school year to build on these incredible experiences and further our school’s commitment to academic excellence in both remote and at-school instruction and for actively striving to be a diverse and inclusive community of learners.