Professional Development

Regular faculty meetings became "literacy workshops" during which all teachers were trained in various literacy teaching techniques. School faculty members and administrators developed the workshops and initially presented them to the administrative team and the Restructuring Committee. This prepared a cadre of 40 in-house trainers who could provide ongoing training and support to other faculty members in their own departments.

Art and music classes are an integral part of school life and also incorporate the literacy approach.

Topics of the literacy workshops included: Using Visuals To Preview a Chapter, Writing Open Responses, and Previewing Text Using the Table of Contents. The intense focus on this training during staff meetings provided teachers with the skills to carry out the literacy plan across all disciplines. All students were provided a consistent approach to learning.

In the fall, teachers were trained for three weeks in the Collins Approach to Writing in half-day training sessions. Every teacher learned methods for teaching open-response writing techniques and learned how to use rubrics to assess student responses and provide helpful feedback. After the training, all departments were assigned particular weeks during which they were to work with their students on the open-response techniques. Department heads closely monitored this implementation, and sample student responses were collected and submitted to the associate principal for curriculum and instruction.

Department heads and housemasters monitored the quality of student writing, and samples of student work were collected and reviewed by the associate principal. Faculty members were responsible for ensuring that the open-response approach was integrated into every class. Therefore, training for the faculty was a vital component of the literacy initiative.