Pedagogical Development
Welcome to the Cincinnati Country Day School website for pedagogical development. In the fall of 2012, we'll enter into year seven of our program for pedagogical development at CCDS, allowing teachers time to explore and collaborate on important educational issues.
How it Works
CCDS has always expected continual pedagogical development, whether implicitly or explicitly through evaluation criteria. This development, though, has occurred most often either in isolation or has been sparked briefly through a reading or in-service lecture with little opportunity for follow through. The pedagogical development model unifies pedagogical development, allowing each individual to move at his or her own pace, but with the support of collaboration, guided collegial interaction, and shared release time. Further, by combining our pedagogical development efforts, we can reap a greater harvest, affecting the entire Pre-K-12 program as well as ourselves and our individual classrooms.
Program Goals
Regardless of the theme chosen, the program strives to ensure that each teacher will have:
- increased awareness of aspects of their chosen topic through brief reading and reflection
- taken risks, having implemented some of the solutions and reflected on their implementation
- collaborated to come up with original solutions in addition to those of the field experts
- recognized some of the work already being done on campus in the area
- gained a greater sense of the Pre-K-12 program
- demonstrated a desire and willingness to grow in the area
- improved measurably in the area
- crafted a plan for continued investigation and implementation
Process
Each theme will require a different approach, but the overall process for the year is the same. Regardless of theme, each teacher will:
- take fifteen minutes to complete a self-evaluation. This evaluation will serve as the base by which he or she can mark improvement.
- do some brief background reading on the topic. This reading will guide discussions at work sessions and lead to innovative creation of implementation plans
- attend three work sessions. These sessions will be multi-disciplinary and multi-divisional collaborative endeavors intended to investigate areas for improvement and seek established and original solutions. Collaboration is encouraged, for the strength of the program is in the collective power of our professional and passionate faculty
- develop detailed lesson implementation plans to share with the strand leaders and the academic dean
- implement what he or she has learned and planed. At the close of each session, we will devote time to creating implementation strategies. Between workshops, teachers are asked to implement ideas, sharing the idea and a reflection of its implementation with the Academic Dean and, if desired, the rest of the theme cohort. At least one implementation will be observed by the Academic Dean. Three total implementations are required. More are encouraged. Ongoing growth is the goal.
- assess his or her development and the program offerings. Revisiting the initial self-evaluation, each teacher will document his or her progress and discuss the results of the year's work with the Academic Dean. This self-assessed progress and notes on the conversation will be offered to division heads for inclusion in the teacher's evaluation. The teacher will be asked to provide feedback on the process as well, with an option for anonymity.
