Professional Development Direction Changing At MCS

Online, February 4, 2011 (Newswire.com) - MASSENA - The Massena Central School District is moving its professional development in a new direction that officials say should be more beneficial to teachers and students.

Director of Educational Support Evelyn M. Fiske said the district will be partnering for the next year with Dr. Max Thompson's company, "Learning-Focused," to give teachers an opportunity to review or learn "exemplary practices and current research."

Dr. Thompson is the project director of the Learning-Focused Schools Model. According to the company's website, he developed the Learning-Focused Schools Model "in response to national, state, and local efforts to increase achievement for all students and to reduce achievement gaps."

The Learning-Focused Model "provides comprehensive school reform strategies and solutions for K-12 schools based on exemplary practices and research-based strategies," the website says."We have worked on this for some time. We didn't really know what direction we were going to go. We ended up going to Ogdensburg and worked with Learning-Focused. Now we have a professional development plan for next year," Superintendent Roger B. Clough II said.

The practices and strategies focus on five areas - planning, curriculum, instruction, assessment and school organization.

Mrs. Fiske said teachers have aligned the local curriculum to state standards, prioritized concepts from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade and have identified the best instructional practices that teachers across all levels of instruction are using at Massena.

But, she said, there's more work to be done.

"We have wonderful teachers here at Massena Central," she said. "But the reality of the teaching profession is the daily demands of the job, grading papers, writing lessons plans, teaching diverse learners and collaborating with peers takes them long past their contractual hours. Keeping up with research is virtually impossible."

She said the "one-shot, stand-alone" professional development sessions don't work either.

"For new strategies and practices to be sustained, teachers need the support of their peers and the administration on a daily basis. The best professional staff development is job-embedded," Mrs. Fiske said.

That's where the Learning-Focused model will come into play, she said, noting it "emphasizes not just simply which strategies to utilize, but how to connect and sequence these strategies for maximum student achievement."

"I know many of (the teachers) have seen this in the past and some use it," she said.

District officials are still negotiating the price of the training with the company, and they will use a combination of district funds and grant money to support the initiative.

In mid-February, Mrs. Fiske said, school administrators, department chairs and grade level leaders will be participating in a one-day overview of the Learning-Focused model.

Then, in early March, representatives from the district's reading, math, science and social studies departments will participate in a workshop called "Power Curriculum."

During that workshop, they will formally align their pre-kindergarten through 12th grade curriculum under the guidance of Learning-Focused staff.

Training continues on March 18 and March 21, and they'll learn about "Catching Kids Up With Acceleration" during the summer. Mrs. Fiske said that will help teachers address what to do when students fall behind.

"They are placed in remedial programs, but the research on these programs is clear - it does not catch them up. National research shows that remediation just doesn't work," she said.

Two more training sessions on Sept. 2 and Oct. 2 will focus on "Connecting, Extending, Thinking" and vocabulary.

"Our work with Learning-Focused will blend perfectly with the work teachers are doing in the professional learning communities by giving us all a common base of understanding of strategies and a lexicon or language on which to center our discussions," Mrs. Fiske said.

"It is my belief that this partnership will greatly benefit our teachers and students," she said. "I think this is an exciting, invigorating time to be working at Massena Central Schools."