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What is staff development? What does the staff work on during that time? Is it only a one-day event or is it ongoing? How does it enhance the learning of my child? The answers to these queries provide a glimpse into staff learning at SRV.

At SRV, teachers are engaged in active participatory scholarship throughout the year. In adult learning communities that encompass inquiry, process, reflection and collaboration, your child's teachers are involved in collective learning with a shared focus, shared responsibility to learn and a disciplined approach to achieving the desired goal: enhancing the quality of students' learning.

Professional learning–or staff development–at SRV spans across grades and disciplines. We work together in small teams (grade level, leadership and special subjects) and as a full faculty. Teachers share their expertise and pedagogical inventions with peers by sharing "best practices," analyze student work, plan academics and themes (the geometry unit we will be undertaking, for example–see School News), expand and refine activities and assessments, and more. We discuss and develop ways to integrate curriculum across disciplines, apply the backward design process to develop teaching plans, review research and data and share curricular content and skills using curriculum maps.

These practices allow us to outline new expectations for our students. We are constantly asking ourselves challenging questions: "How can I make my students reflect on their learning?"; "How should I differentiate instruction to meet the varied learning styles of my students?"; "How should I set up my classroom library?"; "How can I design assignments that reinforce learning from my class to another?"; "How can I enrich my students' understanding of cultural differences?" These are just a few examples.

Teachers across all grade levels have been actively involved in conversations and deep discussions about teaching and learning with outside professionals and experts at workshops and symposia. Last summer, Jane and some of her colleagues spent a week at the Summer Institute on Teaching of Reading at Columbia University. She teamed up with other professionals to explore teaching strategies for developing habits of effective reading among her students. Jane mentions, "I found the workshop very helpful in developing structure and routines in my classroom. Since we have multi-age classrooms, the program doesn't fit neatly into a category but I enjoy adapting elements of the reading workshop based on my students' needs. The Columbia Institute helped me develop a balanced literacy program for the first and second graders with elements of reading, writing, small group instruction, read-aloud, word-study and story time."

Staff learning at SRV is not just limited to workshops and team work. The cross-cultural teacher exchange and international partnership with the Cloud Forest School in Monteverde, Costa Rica, allows for greater cultural and experiential learning and creates opportunities for enriching our sustainability initiative, both globally and at SRV.

At SRV, teachers work toward establishing a school culture that is responsive and adaptive to the needs of our children. Through regular and ongoing professional conversations, peer observations and self-reflections we build new expectations for ourselves and shared high expectations for student learning and achievement.

In Partnership,

Anu Anand
Director of Staff & Program Development

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