Every August, before the school year begins for students, the teachers report to work for about two weeks of "pre-service" work. We use this time to receive important professional development trainings, set up our classrooms, and prepare unit and lesson plans for the year. Every year, we learn something new. This year, we focused on...
- standards-based grading (grading students based on their mastery of content and skills)
- using the new Amplify tablets (instead of laptops)
- restorative practices (like trust circles)
- advisory (to add a new and improved advisory curriculum to our year)
- strategies for teaching English language learners in heterogenous groups
- planning units collaboratively with teams of teachers.
We now have 36 teachers in the International Academy - up from 14 our first year. It is incredible how fast we are growing, and yet how well we are doing it. Every teacher that joins the International Academy enjoys working collaboratively with our team and shares great knowledge and experience with us. Our students are so fortunate to work with such genuine, hard-working, caring adults.