Milk, Cookies, and Stories: Best Practices

On Thursday, January 21st, the Peer Collaborators held an after school workshop called, “Milk, Cookies, and Stories. Our hope was that faculty from the Elementary and High School would take the opportunity to come and share ideas, insights, and best practices, in addition to connecting with fellow teachers. We sent an invitation to all, which included some pertinent questions that could lead to spirited discussion. The Peer Collaborators are excited to report that this workshop was a great success! Nearly 20 people actively participated in thoughtful, meaningful, and at times, emotional discussion surrounding our roles as teachers, and what led us to the path we have chosen. When our time together ended, the group agreed that we would like to meet again for ‘Milk, Cookies, and Stories Part II”!

Cambridge Wins NEA Greater Public School Grant to Elevate the Profession through Teacher Preparation

Check us out, Cambridge is leading the way!
Bennington Banner article

Peer Collaborating: CCS 2014-2015

                        Building Capacity

As Peer Collaborators we want to be available to facilitate collaboration among groups or between individuals. Peer Collaborators hope you will feel comfortable reaching out to us for reasons such as: 

• Brainstorming ideas for lesson planning or classroom management
• Observing individual student behaviors or group dynamics in the classroom
• Sharing ideas or best practices
• Informally reflecting on lessons and/or observations, 
• Lending a confidential ear to any issues or concerns that may arise

“As a peer reviewer I feel it is beneficial to both the person being observed and the observer. I have learned a great deal from observing and working with classroom teachers. It is a wonderful opportunity to observe your co-workers as well as their students. I have enjoyed seeing the routines and management styles of other rooms. I was able to get ideas and bring them back into my own classroom. In one classroom I co-taught a writing lesson. It was exciting to work with other students and rewarding to see their engagement. The teacher shared that she appreciated another set of hands, ideas and enthusiasm. Peer reviewing is a positive way to learn from one another.”                                             -Kristy Jeffords 

We are here for you! We want to help in any way we can!
Look for us in September 2015!
Mollie Bell, Hillory Hamilton, Kristy Jeffords and John Mooney

Falling in Love

Over the past seven months, Melissa Skellie and Kelly Toleman led a professional book club centered around Falling in Love With Close Reading by Christopher Lehman & Kate Roberts. Participants in this group included both High School and Elementary teachers which enabled a broad range of conversation focused around the strategy of close reading.

In these conversations, we started with a general summary of each chapter. Then, we narrowed our discussion down to a more specific conversation that included how each technique can be used in the various classes represented. This professional talk enhanced everyone’s understanding of how to successfully implement close reading strategies in the classroom.

A Really Great Tool: TurnItIn

On March 3rd, a Turnitin workshop was presented by our high school librarian, Terese Brennan, as part of a professional development faculty meeting.  

Turnitin, a software, CCS HS Library purchased, as a teaching tool to help students understand and avoid plagiarism, has the following three features: OriginalityCheck,  GradeCheck, and PeerMark.  The OriginalityCheck is the feature that checks a student’s paper against a database of sources to see how much of the paper is original and how much may be plagiarized.  The student is able to see a color-coded list of where his/her paper matches information from the sources in the Turnitin databases.  The student then has the opportunity to make correction to the paper and to re-submit it. The GradeCheck is the feature the teacher can use to make correction to the paper and then the student can view it and download the paper with a list of corrections that need to be made.  The student is able to read a definition of the editing suggestion a teacher makes to the paper. The PeerMark is the last features and enables students to peer review other students’ papers. Currently the first two features have been used, but as of yet, the third feature has not. Jason Sutliff participated in the presentation, as he was able to illustrate the practical classroom application of his students using this software.  Using his students papers, we were able to illustrate the first two features, so that our attendants could see Turnitin in action.

-authored by Terese Brennan

Shining the Light on Academic Optimism

View the full powerpoint here

On the afternoon of December 3rd, Terese Brennan, Mary Laedlein, and Audrey Brownell led a professional development workshop and discussion  on the topic of Academic Optimism. A lively discussion revolved around the following key attributes of Academic Optimism:

 

Academic Optimism of Schools is a collective set of beliefs held by the faculty as a whole that:

• The school faculty believes it can reach even the most difficult students-collective efficacy.
• The school faculty trusts students and parents-faculty trust.
• The School faculty emphasizes academics-academic emphasis.  

-Wayne K Hoy

Reflecting on STLE 1

Over the last two years, our small, rural district has begun to structure opportunities and utilize the expertise of teacher leaders.  We were awarded a NYSED Strengthening Teacher and Leader Effectiveness grant which allowed us to really think about our gaps.  Where did we need help?  Where could teachers' help provide the most impact on student achievement?  We set to work.  We developed a protocol to nominate, apply, and score applications that lent a sense of legitimacy to the selections.  We established partnerships with outside agencies, like the Capital Area School Development Association, and Institutions of Higher Education, like the State University of New York at Plattsburgh, to plan and develop targeted Professional Development.  So with our first eight teacher leaders, called Professional Support Providers we got busy assessing both the perceived and real needs of the district.   We formed a team, training our building level leaders and our new teacher leaders in important foundational areas like Cognitive Coaching, Understanding by Design, the CCLS Literacy Shifts, Evidence Based Observation, and Data Driven Instruction.  We met, we planned, we brainstormed.  

We opened doorways of communication with each other and those outside the building, our partners.  We collaborated.  And our work, worked.

We met some obstacles but many, many more successes-and, not to be cliche but, even our obstacles became opportunities for discussion, articulating our professional decision making, and growth.  Our PSPs have offered a multitude of professional development opportunities to all faculty, posting their created resources for those who could not attend.  This commitment to owning our own learning and facilitating that in our colleagues has been well received and appreciated.  But we didn't stop there.  We worked with our partner, SUNY Plattsburgh, to craft a 16 week single placement student teaching experience that brought these candidates the time, mentoring, and feedback they needed to successfully approach the NYS Teaching Standards, navigate the nuances of the culture in the building, and build long lasting and meaningful professional relationships with staff.  As we close out STLE 1 and head into the second year of STLE 2; we wanted to share the team's reflections.  

You can view our short video here.  

We hope you get a few minutes to watch it and enjoy our thoughts, maybe even tap your feet, but most importantly get excited!  Get excited about the work that is happening, and the work yet to come.  Get excited about the meaningful contributions this type of professional dialogue fosters.  

And, ultimately, get excited for your part in elevating our profession!