Urgent vs Important – Reflections on the return to school

Question 1:  I joined Cohort 21 because every teacher I know who has participated in this PD has raved about how much they enjoyed and learned from it. My goal this year is to figure out how I can start to support teachers and students with PBL/inquiry and help make learning more visible. I also want to find ways to help teachers coordinate more cross-subject, cross-grade, and cross-campus connections.

Question 2: The strand that resonates the most with me right now is Pedagogy, Belonging, and Wellbeing (JK-6). What I feel is important in this area for my school at the moment is finding ways to integrate more inquiry, PBL, and experiential learning across subjects, grades, and campuses to maximize student learning, connection, and motivation.

Potential Areas of Focus

• More authentic, inquiry-based and student-driven learning + experiential learning
• Connecting projects between grades – to do this, we need an efficient way for people to know what other grades are doing
• Build cohesive learning community within Junior School as well as between Junior School and new Senior School – will create more sense of community and connection, and will also result in greater retention of students
• Need to share more learning stories so more people know about the amazing things happening and so that parents can better understand the learning process and the depth of learning students are achieving through projects

Questions I Have 

• What is the most efficient way to gather information about projects that are happening in the school?
• Where do I start in terms of finding ways to support teachers and students with inquiry, Project-Based and Experiential Learning?
• How can I best use the 50 minutes per week in my schedule to start supporting teachers and students?
• What are the best ways of communicating to parents the learning process and the depth of learning students are achieving through projects?
• How can we better educate parents about methods of teaching and learning that don’t resemble the ones they experienced and consider “more rigorous”?