Wood Rose staff development week
Our teachers at Wood Rose are always working hard to improve themselves as teachers and persons. This week the Academy staff spent an evening together discussing what it really means to be a leader in the classroom - to work with integrity, daring and a willingness to continually grow in our vocation as a teacher. We practice integrity in our classroom by modeling quality to our students. We live the virtue of daring when we stretch ourselves to try something new that will benefit our students and ourselves. We should always look for new opportunities to learn more about the best way to reach and teach our students. The staff also reviewed the centerpiece of the personalized education project, the mentoring program, and its guiding principles. We were reminded of the importance of creating a true sense of teamwork between the parents, student, mentor and teachers. The evening meeting concluded with a catered dinner, generously provided by Taqueria Los Gallos and the Cardenas Family.
Our preschool teachers enjoyed their own staff development evening that night with a special presentation by Dr Joan Means, professor of Early Childhood Education. Dr Means spoke to our preschool staff about kindergarten readiness. She discussed the importance of getting to know your students well so that the teacher will be readily able to identify those students who are ready to move on and those students who might need some further time in preschool to develop the academic and social skills necessary to be successful in kindergarten. She shared a memory tool with the teachers to help them remember all those essential teaching practices that are critical to helping to prepare their students for kindergarten. Finally they went over a readiness list from the public school transitional kindergarten program and discussed specific ways to address each of those standards in their classroom. They also enjoyed the delicious food provided Taqueria Los Gallos.
Additionally, this week our Academy teachers enjoyed a lunchtime teacher talk with an overview of the SHARP Nights for Parents program currently being offered by our chaplain, Fr. Mark Mannion.
He spoke about the five areas of formation, Spiritual, Human, Apostolic, Religious, and Professional and how we, as teachers, contribute to helping our students grow in virtue and, consequently, in each of these areas.
