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Spotlight On...
Fall Staff Retreat
For years you may have seen "Staff Development Days" and "Staff Retreats" on the school calendar. Have you ever wondered what these are about?
Last Friday, most of the faculty piled into a few vans and cars and "retreated" to a nice beach house in Sea Isle. Our agenda was to meet as a whole group to do substantive staff development work. We also planned time to enjoy each other as friends and colleagues, and to build our bonds as a learning community.
The first part of our work involved continuing with the process we began last spring of examining and re-articulating the model of progressive education at SRV. We have looked at our core values, and we have begun to assess how these are (or should be) manifested in the school's curricula and institutional practices.
On this day we determined to begin to look at our teaching methods. What are the core progressive methods that we all use (or should use) at SRV? In an interesting series of conversations, we worked on naming these teaching methods and coming to agreement about what they mean and how they should work.
Our next step in this process will be to assess how well we, as an institution and as individual teachers, are incorporating these teaching methods into our daily practices. From there, we will set goals for individual and group staff development.
The second piece of work we undertook was to view the video F.A.T. City – a film that tries to give teachers and parents a sense of what it is like to be in school with a learning difference. This sparked an interesting conversation, and inspired us to think more about how we can serve all of the learners at SRV.
The final goal of this Staff Retreat was to give us time to be together as a community. Many of us talked on the beach (it was a gorgeous day!), while others donned one of Annie's wet suits and went swimming or surfing. I'll let you guess which of the teachers got the longest ride!
Those of us who could stay had a little pre-dinner party on the beach Friday night. Then we talked, played word games and laughed into the night.
This Retreat struck a good balance between work and community building. We all feel closer, and more inspired to continue to ask, think and talk about the hard questions. Thank you, parents, for understanding why it is so important for us to have this kind of time together. We guarantee that your children will be the beneficiaries.
