| 1. | 3/19/2008 7:20:00 PM | When people use words like "job-embedded" I get a little nervous. What the heck does that mean, anyway!?! Also, how about a goal that all staff get equitab;e opptunities to participate in professional development opportunities? I fear that support for this from the district is more equal for some that it is for others. |
| 2. | 4/7/2008 9:56:00 PM | Adequate time and resources are equally important and necessary if this goal is worth any attention at all. Sustainability and capacity are researched related topics that this district needs to consider. The pace right now is too fast! |
| 3. | 4/7/2008 9:22:00 PM | Hopefully the District policy on Continueing Education Credits is intact and structured to allow professionals to keep current in their fields and not be penalized on the salary schedule. |
| 4. | 4/8/2008 12:31:00 AM | We need time and training to learn and then try new initiatives. Time with our departments, co-teachers and time to implement is really important. Also, please make the professional development training on-going - not a one time event. |
| 5. | 4/8/2008 12:26:00 PM | I would like to see some other things go on once in awhile with professional development besides curriculum work. I know curriculum is what we do but sometimes it would be nice to work on some other areas such as technology. |
| 6. | 4/8/2008 12:18:00 PM | Would this include tuition reimbursement? |
| 7. | 4/8/2008 3:02:00 PM | does this mean district will regulate what courses or credits teachers will be able to take? |
| 8. | 4/8/2008 4:21:00 PM | i am not sure that this is clearly stated; we are not given enough time for this, Zaspel has been very supportive of attending professional conferences, but we need more time to meet as a staff to effect change if that is what we are going to do, would like to see a site based management team |
| 9. | 4/8/2008 4:59:00 PM | The term "job embedded" is ambiguous. What does this mean? Will there be time for us to sharpen our craft? |
| 10. | 4/8/2008 8:52:00 PM | Although this goal is worded rather abstractly, professional development may not initially appear to be job-embedded. A sustained interest may cultivate itself into a curricular frontier, as is often the case. |
| 11. | 4/8/2008 9:06:00 PM | Perhaps utilizing early release as it was in the past to further istruct educators rather than to complete academic goals could be helpful. |
| 12. | 4/8/2008 7:58:00 PM | We have to look at a different method of providing this. The early release days just don't work. How about quality on-line presentations that offer flexibility in the topic that people self select and the choice of when to access it. In the area of technology we need people who are willing to sit down with employees and help them learn new tasks, or how about having some of our own staff members teach us new techniques instead of them monitoring student in study hall. We have terrific people whose occupation it is to teach and not monitor lunchrooms or study halls. We need to start thinking outside the traditional box. |
| 13. | 4/9/2008 5:14:00 PM | Sounds good, but what does it mean. Right now a lot of our fomalized profesional development is in the form of classes we take to maintain our licenses and move up the pay scale. With the advent of PI 34 there are many other ways to work on profesional development and maintain licensure that do not require classwork (though classwork is permisable it is not the desired route under PI 34) I would like to see the district amend our contract to account for these changes, both to support teacher in PI 34 and to encourage teachers to explore a more diverse range and in many cases more meaningfull ways of improving their teaching. I think the district should make some language changes to accomplish this and alter the salary schedule in such a way as to provide more ways of moving up in the salary matrix other that by classes alone. |
| 14. | 4/10/2008 1:16:00 PM | Listen to teachers. They are asking for this...with some hesitancy. We've got to begin to look at the "Just what you need, just in time" model of professional development. We all know time is tight for professional development, or anything else for that matter. The district needs to be smarter about what is presented and how it is presented, and to whom it is presented. Perhaps spending $5,000-10,000 on an assessment training that will be put to the back of the line as far as transformational change of our school would be better spent in other ways. Perhaps we could provide an online resource/presentation about the same topic that teachers can and must view in their prep time (yep, that's part of what they should be doing during that time anyhow!!!). Or, maybe the district provides an Ipod/mp3 player for every teacher and they receive updates/professional development via a different resource than sending everyone to a "one and done" style of professional development that impacts less than 3% of the overall staff (and to believe that those people are actually dispersing the information is ludicrous...lack of time or willingness to other educators to hear the message from someone else's conference is a sure end to the enthusiasm a conference can spark in attendees) |
| 15. | 4/10/2008 4:36:00 PM | increase time ( I realize this is a four letter word)to prep and discuss planning/ideas with colleagues especially in sciences that have tremendous set up and tear down times for labs |
| 16. | 4/10/2008 6:13:00 PM | Great goal. :) (Assuming, of course, time is allowed) |
| 17. | 4/10/2008 7:09:00 PM | Allow teachers time during early releases to work on their own curriculum instead of what administration decides they need to work on |