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Half Day PD Release Plan

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The mission of the GISU is to ensure that all members of the GISU learning community are curious, creative, courageous, and capable of pursuing their aspirations in a diverse and ever-changing world.

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We believe in the power of educators, working together, to ensure that all students learn at high levels.

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It is vital that our professional development structure supports our educators in their learning and growth in differentiated ways to affect learning for our students at a broad scale.

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Why prioritize half day releases?

  • On-going, protected professional learning promotes collective efficacy and increases teacher clarity
  • Collective efficacy and teacher clarity have some of the highest impacts on student learning

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Image refers to research by John Hattie. An effect size of .4 is considered significant.

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Logistics

  • Students dismissed at 11:30 with bagged lunches
  • Professional learning runs from 1:00pm - 4:15pm
  • 1:00 Start time allows us to meet contractual obligations for prep, lunch and includes travel time.
  • 4:15 end time is possible because we will not have a staff meeting that week.
  • Release days will be on the following Thursdays:
    • September 28th, November 30th, January 25th, and April 18th

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Who

Topic

Purpose

Lead

All math educators K-8

Illustrative Math Implementation

To ensure equity in implementation and access for students.

Instructional Coaches & Illustrative Math Facilitators

Special Educators

New Evaluation Processes

To ensure consistent and high quality processes and procedures are in place for special education evaluations.

Evaluation Team

Interventionists

Evidence-Based Interventions & Progress Monitoring

To ensure that all interventionists have the skills and tools to effectively intervene and collect data to make instructional decisions.

Consultants TBD

Content Specific Teachers: ELA, Social Studies and Science

Wit & Wisdom and writing

To ensure consistent implementation of reading comprehension and writing strategies across content areas.

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Great Minds Facilitator

Support Staff-academic

Wit and Wisdom and Illustrative Math

To ensure that our support staff are equipped with the knowledge needed to be

Facilitators from Great Minds and Illustrative

Support Staff- behavior

Verbal De-escalation strategies

To ensure that we have consistent, proactive methods of helping our students with the most significant SEL and Behavioral Needs

Behavior Support Specialists trained in Handle with Care

Health Assistants

Health Topics

To ensure all health assistants have the training necessary to implement health plans effectively.

District Nurse

Unified Arts Teachers

Writing & Content Specific Topics

To ensure that there is equity in access to high quality Unified Arts programming and writing integration.

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Assessing Impact

  • Educator Surveys (in collaboration with the Center for Public Research and Leadership out of Columbia University)
  • Family surveys
  • Student growth in reading, writing, and mathematics

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA