Teach 180: The In-Service Day (Day 109)

It's not a teaching day today.  It's an in-service day.  Thinking back to my in-service days over the past 25 years of teaching I would say that there is really only one that I remember with lasting importance.  When I taught in Ames, Iowa, there was a 3-day cooperative learning seminar that the entire school was required to attend.  We had to create sub plans and 1/3 of the school was out for 3 consecutive school days. By the end of day 9, we all had been trained by the authors of the book Learning Together and Learning Alone.  Some teachers were definitely more into learning than others, but having a common language and understanding common strategies for cooperative learning was very beneficial.  Language like "think-pair-share" and "jigsaw method" were quickly understood by the students, because so many teachers were implementing cooperative learning methods.  We had follow-up meetings throughout the year to discuss successes and setbacks.  I must have learned something about cooperative learning, because I still use some of the structures in my classes.

Today's in-service day was nothing like that.  It was one day that was fairly fragmented.  We had much to "cover".  We had a presentation about a travel grant. Then, the Head of School shared the new school vision, and data on student engagement that had been collected last spring.  Next, we met in cross-divisional groups to continue to work on group projects.  We have been given 5 hours to complete a group project on a topic of interest and prepare a presentation or document to share in April.  My group has come to the consensus that Project-Based Learning would not work well on a large scale at our school due to the lack of time needed to collaborate on a weekly basis.

Finally, math and science teachers met with a consultant for 3.5 hours to talk about concerns we have about the new schedule and its impact on the math and science curriculum.  We touched on curriculum, assessment, and strategies for teaching in longer periods.  We could have easily spent 3.5 hours or more on each of these topics individually.  The consultant had a mathematics background and certainly understood our concerns, but we didn't really have enough time to make any substantive changes for the immediate future (say next week) or for the fall.  We all agreed that more time was needed to make curricular changes and that we needed to investigate that as a group and not in isolation.

The day ended with announcements relative to enrollment, finances and the school calendar for next year.  We got through our agenda for the day and we certain did "cover" much.  However, we did not accomplish much and what I learned today will unfortunately have little impact on what happens in my classroom.