Educators become the students

by Tammy DiPonio

While students were gearing up for Halloween festivities, the Platte County staff participated in a day long professional development day. Pre-kindergarten through high school teachers worked with author and national educational consultant, Larry Ainsworth. One of Ainsworth’s nine books is titled Unwrapping the Standards and is an excellent read.

After Ainsworth’s keynote presentation, teachers and administrators spent time “unwrapping” state standards, determining grade level and content clarity, creating and evaluating what quality assessment questions look like. How does this help our students? When teachers are clear on what they are teaching, they work together to plan for student learning and create assessments that match the intended learning. The goal is to ensure that these best practice strategies are happening in every classroom and reaching every student.

Many of our district teachers also took on the role as presenters. They facilitated breakout sessions on a variety of topics such as Algebra Tiles, Differentiated Instruction, Grant Writing, SIS K12, and Reading Workshop, just to name a few. Our staff was so impressive!

The Platte County School District is proud to work as a Professional Learning Community promoting educators as learners, teachers teaching teachers and continuous improvement… in the end all of this = student success, student achievement, student growth.