Boosting Brain Power With Professional Development
A teacher’s education is never-ending. It doesn’t stop once they receive their diplomas, and it certainly doesn’t stop once they’re at the helm of their own classroom. Rather, it is a continual process that prepares and equips them to unpack complex problems, themes, and questions alongside their students every day.
That’s why at The Ellis School, faculty members participated in enriching and engaging professional development across divisions together this summer. These on-campus opportunities gave Ellis faculty the chance to reflect on their curriculum, develop new strategies, and step outside their comfort zone while mentoring, advising, and learning from one another.
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Just as teachers empower their students to be intellectually curious, Ellis teachers are empowered to stretch themselves and their expertise by offering engaging learning opportunities throughout each year. By collaborating and learning together as a team, faculty are challenged to share their own skill sets, ask difficult questions, and assess what’s working and what could be improved in their classrooms. From learning new methods and programs to understanding the pressures of being a girl in today’s world, these sessions are meant to enrich faculty knowledge, while better positioning them to influence student success.
Summer Institute
Thanks to the generous support of alumna Lou KOTLER Levine '66, Ellis teachers both ran and attended the first-ever Summer Institute this June with a week of workshops focused on sharing best teaching practices and curricular work with each other. Faculty members led sessions that delved into topics like collaborative learning and group work, team building, educational technologies, and more. In these sessions, faculty explored responsive classroom techniques, learned new tools and applications, and considered strategies on how to best serve and communicate with students.
Workshops included:
- OneNote for Classrooms
- Effective Conversations for Collaboration with Students, Teachers, and Families
Using Desmos: An Online Graphing Calculator - Making Group Work Work
- Team Building Activities
- Design and the Vinyl Cutter
- Supporting Emotional and Academic Success in Black Girls
- Working with Students with Different Learning Styles
- Educational Technologies
Faculty Summer Reading Discussions
At the end of the 2017-2018 school year, faculty were tasked with completing two readings over the summer. To begin the 2018-2019 school year, faculty gathered together to discuss the readings, share their responses and reflections, and consider how the concepts apply to their work at Ellis.
Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People by Mahzarin R. Banaji
“Be brave enough to start a conversation that matters.” Gina Kilpela, Middle School Writing Support Teacher, and Ciera Young, Director of Equity and Inclusion, began the diversity reading debrief by sharing this quote from Margaret Wheatley. In the session, Ms. Kilpela and Ms. Young challenged faculty to consider the ways implicit and hidden biases were at play both in society and at Ellis.
Through thought-provoking conversations about their own experiences, faculty discussed equity, diversity, and inclusion in small groups and as a community while considering how they can reframe their thinking. By providing a safe space to have this dialogue, faculty acknowledged that they can shift their perspective and confront their own biases to do better in their classroom and the world.
Enough As She Is: How to Help Girls Move Beyond Impossible Standards of Success to Live Healthy, Happy, and Fulfilling Lives by Rachel Simmons
Rachel Simmon’s book Enough As She Is explores how adults can support girls throughout their adolescence and help them move beyond the impossible standards placed upon them today. Led by Dean of Students Ashley Dotson, the discussion focused on the themes of perfectionism and competition, the role of social media, and self-image and self-compassion.
In small collaborative groups, faculty discussed noteworthy passages and quotes from the book and shared how their takeaways fit into Ellis’ culture and educational philosophy. They then suggested ways to apply their learnings to their classroom, clubs, teams, and advisory groups and offered ideas on how they could model these positive behaviors to students throughout the year.
Faculty will continue their education on this topic when Ms. Simmons visits The Ellis School on April 3, 2018, and hosts student, family, and faculty sessions.
Envision Her at Ellis
If you're interested in exploring Ellis for your daughter, let's connect! Request information about enrollment, attend one of our upcoming events, or hear about Ellis from those who know it best: our students.
