Staff Development Reflection
View Teachers as Competent Thinkers and Learners
“How you see teachers and the scope of their work is critical to your success in helpings solve problems, only noticing their lack of skills and knowledge to manage behavior or plan lessons for learning, you will most likely approach with techniques, and impatience rather than engage with them in the dynamics of the teaching and learning process. Most current approaches to professional development reinforce remediation and practice.
In contrast, if you acknowledge your teachers as competent human beings with the potential to rise to their best selves, you will invest the time, resources, and enthusiasm to engage with them in their work.”
Source: Carter and Curtis 2010, 131.
As Quoted in Preschool Learning Foundations page 60
As Early Childhood Educators we make a commitment to lifelong learning and attending and participating in staff development workshops, conferences and other activities are an integral part of that experience.
On the course website you will find a sample Parent Handbook with sections devoted to the topics/issues that the handbook developers used to provide essential information to the parents in their programs.
For this assignment imagine you are about to create a Staff Handbook that would include essential information for staff and you are charges with creating a section devoted to staff development.
Identify 5 topics that you think should be included.
Topics might address aspects of curriculum/lesson planning or management of the classroom/children’s behavior as suggested in the quotation above but they could certainly extend well beyond that addressing, for example, the implications of the corona virus pandemic.
For each topic
summarize/define the topic.
indicate why you think this topic is essential.
cite a resource that you might use if you were in charge of creating a workshop to address the topic you’ve selected.
Review the directions for the Staff Development Share Discussion and post one of your paragraphs.
https://www.naeyc.org/
