How can I help?

In a few short days, I will be working with the new faculty at my school, Loomis Chaffee, as part of the new faculty orientation program. I have been doing a great deal of thinking about what would be the best use of their time and what I should focus on and “do” with them as they join our community. Most of my new colleagues have had some teaching experience so they are not completely new to the profession, but a few of them are brand new on the scene and have never been in a classroom other than as a student. As I thought back to new faculty orientation before my first teaching job, I realized that I did not get much guidance at all and was pretty much left on my own to figure out what to teach and how to teach it. Pretty scary actually! I am committed to making sure my new colleagues do not have an experience like I did 25 years ago.

I have been inspired by a number of blog posts from members of my PLN (Steven Anderson, Grant Wiggins, Lyn Hilt) recently having to do with the fundamental questions of

  • Why do I teach?
  • How can I improve as a teacher?
  • How can I best help my colleagues to become better teachers?

I have shared a few of Grant’s most recent posts with the new faculty prior to our orientation training and I am thinking about showing them the following video clip that I first saw in a post from Lyn Hilt:

 

I did send the new faculty a brief google form to fill out asking them what they were most excited and anxious about prior to the start of school and asked them to give me suggestions for topics they wanted me to address when we met. As those thoughts come in, I may tweek what I do, but so far my plan includes the following:

  • Establishing a PLN. I want to get them all hooked in with Twitter at the very least and will add them to a circle in Google+ so that they will always have a network of support available to them. I also plan on giving them a quick overview of some of the other PLN resources out there that I use. These include but are not limited to: Project PLN, The Flipped Classroom, Educator’s PLN, Classroom 2.0.
  • Lesson planning. In the past I have had the new faculty experience a lesson as students in my classroom. I ran a 45 minute class and they got to be the students. After the 45 minutes, we dissected the lesson as teachers. I shared with them the planning I had done prior to the lesson and what I would do going forward given what I learned as the teacher. In the past, this activity has generated wonderful discussion about a whole range of topics including assessment, homework, pacing and differentiated instruction to name a few. Being able to switch out of teacher mode for 45 minutes has been a relief for them as well given all that they have had to endure during the past few days.

I have limited time so I do not want to try and cram too much into the time I do have with them. If I am successful in getting them to establish and utilize their PLN, I will have plenty of help!

Thoughts? Suggestions?

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