Ensuring excellent teaching
As part of Rose Park’s inspirational and nurturing
environment, teachers work with and support one
another as they examine their own performance
and make changes to improve their instruction. The
high rate of retaining effective teachers, along with
the advanced experience of teachers new to the
school, adds to the overall quality of education.
Teacher mentoring. Rose Park invests substantial
time and effort in mentoring. Volunteer mentors
work with new teachers for a year to help them improve their instruction, assessment, and collaboration skills. Being a mentor, while not a requirement,
has become part of life for many Rose Park teachers who step forward to help new teachers adjust
and improve their professional performance.
All teachers participate in the school’s Friends
Among Friends program, where pairs of Rose Park
faculty observe their peers teaching lessons. The
observers use rubrics and guidelines to help focus
their observation and supply talking points for
teachers when they meet together after the instructional session. This experience trains teachers to
better understand what to look for during observations and expands their questioning techniques to
support observation and the quality of classroom
discussions.
Beyond the formal mentoring and support systems,
Rose Park teachers support one another as a part of
daily life. One teacher said, “Teachers visit teachers
in other classrooms and ask, ‘Can I observe you?’
I’ve gotten to observe other teachers who asked for
help. There is great support from our administrators
but also with each other. We help each other out a
lot.”
Professional learning communities. Professional
learning communities (PLCs) have formed throughout Rose Park Middle School. Coordinated once a
month by the numeracy and literacy coaches, the
PLCs provide sessions where the coach models
lessons for teachers. The PLCs provide a place
for teachers to share new resources and discuss
best practices and research on student learning.
Grade-level teams receive time every day to share
pedagogical ideas, coordinate academic and field
trip schedules, and exchange student achievement
information.
The PLCs also encourage teachers to build leadership and collaboration skills. Teachers work closely
with the numeracy coach to analyze and improve
lessons. Like the posting of student expectations,
teachers’ goals are also made visible throughout
the school, giving the entire community a clear
sense of what teachers are doing and striving to
accomplish.
Common Core State Standards. Rose Park transitioned to the Common Core State Standards for
mathematics and language arts in August 2012.
Before the transition, teachers received extensive
professional development from the state, school
district, and the school. The math and literacy
coaches work with district officials to analyze and
understand the Common Core standards, and meet
with PLCs to help teachers adjust to the change by
providing school-based professional development
and training on helping teachers implement the
standards in their classrooms.
To help students thrive under the new standards,
teachers now incorporate instructional practices
that they believe will improve student performance
in the future. For example, teachers have begun
administering assessments that are designed to
assess a student’s depth of content knowledge. In
math classes, teachers push students to justify how
they arrived at an answer or explain what steps they
Being a mentor has
become part of
life for many Rose
Park teachers who
step forward to
help new teachers
adjust and improve
their professional
performance.
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Pathways to the Prize
Lessons from the 2012 SCORE Prize School Winners