Study Group: Creating Socially Conscious Professional Development

WITSTeachers

Being the Change: Lessons and Strategies to Teach Social Comprehension

Rochelle Lee Teacher Award Study Groups are school-based professional learning communities. Study groups develop a goal to guide their learning throughout the school year, and meet monthly to discuss instruction and push their practice to reach their goal. Learn more about Edison Park Elementary School’s study group and what they learned about the components of a balanced literacy program.

School: Edison Park Elementary School

Text: Being the Change: Lessons and Strategies to Teach Social Comprehension by Sara K. Ahmed

Study Group Leader: Nichol Somers

Study Group Members: Christine Pace, Kelly Hayes, Lorraine Nunez, Carrie Stern, Lee Marcheschi

Goal: Creating socially conscious professional development by conducting a multi-day PD where social comprehension strategies are introduced, modeled, and practiced among the staff. Then teachers can take them back to their classes.

The intention of this professional development initiative is to help create an inclusive and socially conscious professional development and classroom environment where student and teacher identities are explored and validated using strategies and activities to better understand our world and our role in it.

We decided as a group the author does an incredible job of providing activities that are accessible to mix into your classroom and building a culture where all identities are seen and validated. We love the guiding principles and will be using them as a guideline when we introduce and share these with teachers and staff at our end-of-year socially conscious professional development.