CAIS

The recent Professional Development Day (Nov. 4) was part of the Action Plan that emerged from the Self-Study last year. This is included in TARGET 2: CAIS will meet the needs of students with learning differences, task 4. Provide professional development opportunities for teachers to fill this need.

We invited Dr. Danny Brassell of SDE (Staff Development for Educators) to conduct an all day workshop for the teachers with an early evening session for parents. Topics for the teachers included A Baker’s Dozen of Lessons Learned from the Teaching
Trenches, Dare to Differentiate: 50 Terrific Teacher Tricks, Motivation: Turning Reluctant Learners Into Passionate Ones, and Assess Without Stress. His parent session was titled DO or DI: How Your Child’s Teacher Individualizes Instruction for Your Child. In the afternoon a alternate session was offered in Chinese for teachers. Prof. Chang Ji Mei from San Jose State presented on Differentiated Instruction in Practice in Chinese. Professor Chang has worked with us before.

A majority of the teachers and parents indicated on the evaluation forms that they found the presentations informative and motivational while a minority felt the English presentation lacked the depth we were looking for and included examples that were not appropriate for our circumstance. We have discussed the evaluations with SDE.

The general format of the day is one we will use again in the future. The full day workshop using a national organization allows all the teachers to participate together. This provides a richer atmosphere than having individual or small groups of teachers attend workshops. This also provides us with an opportunity to provide a parent education component. About twenty parents attended at a time that faced competition from election returns.

Another area of activity on the Action Plan is on reviewing and establishing benchmarks. Since August, teachers across all grade levels have been completing draft benchmarks. The drafts are scheduled to be completed prior to Thanksgiving break. In the following three months, division directors and I will be reviewing the benchmarks to identify any gaps or unintended redundancies. They will be compared to the curriculum maps that were developed over the past three years.

After the administrative review of the benchmarks, they will be returned to the teachers for any necessary adjustments. Report cards will then be revisited for any necessary adjustments reflected in the revised benchmarks. All of this is part of the Action Plan for GOAL I: DEFINING AND REFINING THE PROGRAM TO MEET THE NEEDS OF ALL STUDENTS, TARGET 1: CAIS will establish benchmarks for academic areas and observable outcomes for CAIS Learning Expectations and the four tasks that are part of this target.

We will continue to give periodic updates on Action Plan progress.

The next blog will highlight my visit to the village of Qu Gu where I delivered the cards and supplies to Qu Gu Primary School on behalf of our students and parents.