Teachers growing professionally

One of the many great things about our staff at Baker-Butler is that our teachers continue to grow professionally. At our recent faculty meeting our teachers began our year-long discussion of how to increase our effectiveness in supporting all students to learn how to read.

During this time together there were several activities for professional development for our staff. As one example, teachers shared the "look fors" (what we would expect to see during a visit in a classroom) of effective reading instruction as well as why they thought that look for was important. For instance, one look for was small group instruction, and the why was because it allowed teachers to teach  students on their individual academic level. To make these two ideas stand out, the look fors were written on blue Post Its and the whys were written on pink Post Its, and they were placed together on 4 large sheets of paper throughout the library.

After teachers shared their thoughts, they then did a "gallery walk," where they examined other teachers' thoughts and then we analyzed the responses for patterns and common themes.

Gallery walking for patterns and themes

This is just a small example of the many ways that Baker-Butler teachers continue to grow professionally all the time.