Staff+Development

ASCD April 2005 | Volume 62 | Number 7, Pages 52-54
 * [[file:On the Minds of Middle Schoolers.pdf]]The Adolescent Learner: On the Minds of Middle Schoolers**, by Erika Daniels,- ...

For our opening staff meeting this year, we begin with having staff do a professional reading "On the Minds of Middle Schoolers" listed above. This article is an easy read, was well received by ALL of our staff and lead to some very positive and focussed discussions on the core business of Middle School and then helped lead us in writing our Essential Agreements as a middle school team.

We will continue to use Professional Readings at various staff meetings throughout the year. If you have any to recommend, please let me know.

Donna Connolly Middle School Principal Western Academy of Beijing

PTC has a new Counselor Training Centre this year to add to their list of PTC, TTC etc. http://www.ted.com/ gives educational talks from people like Ken Robinson on creativity in schools. Can be quite witty and informative. Very varied selection of talks.

Professional reading is an area that we are really trying to push with our faculty at GSIS. I was a little shocked last year when I read through the teachers' professional learning logs to discover that the only professional reading most people had engaged in were the articles that I periodically placed in their mailboxes, and the book that they were required to read as part of the professional reading book club we initiated.

This year we are meeting more regularly with department teams, and each meeting concludes with a professional reading goal for the next meeting. The major foci so far have been Understanding by Design by Wiggins and McTighe, and the MYP subject guides and Principles to Practices guide. We have also used journal articles as discussion pieces during our PD meetings.

It still feels like faculty members are only reading what they are being asked to read. I would like to hear how other MS adminstrators promote a culture of independent professional reading amongst the faculty.

Jason Cooper Middle School Principal Gyeonggi Suwon International School