Observations, intellectual discussion and surprise announcements made this an extraordinary week! On Monday, I attended the NC Public Schools Forum meeting. Our committee meetings were held first followed by a meeting of the full board. Our committee meetings are always full of interesting and thought provoking information. As I have mentioned in earlier blogs, I have the opportunity to participate in Study Group II and focus on Quality Teacher Retention. We broke into two groups - one looked at issues surrounding teachers and the other group looked at issues surrounding administrators. Everyone contributed so much to our discussion. We talked about leadership and its importance and of course teacher salary. One of the ideas that was tossed around was paying teachers based on simple supply and demand. Math, Science and Exceptional Children's teachers would be paid on a different scale. Now before you start yelling at the computer screen....take a deep breath and think through it. First, this is only an idea that the committee brought to the group. Second, look at our budget. Salary changes of any kind in the near future are doubtful. I encourage you to study up on this and submit your comments. I would really love to have some teacher input on ways to revamp our teacher salary scale. We also talked about salary differentiation around teacher leadership roles as well. Of course we tackled other topics related to teacher retention such as quality professional development, leadership opportunities and so forth.
Tuesday morning, Brandon Patterson (Assistant Director of Recruitment and Development), traveled to Carteret County to make a special announcement. Callie Smith, a teacher at Bogue Sound Elementary School, was named the new Southeast Regional Teacher of the Year. Congratulations Callie! I wish I could have attended also, but my schedule just did not want to cooperate! Enjoy all of the fun and excitement this brings!
On Tuesday, I had the opportunity to meet with the Beginning Teachers from Knightdale High School before my weekly EPFP meeting. What a great group! Leigh Ann Alford and I teach together with the Global Initiative Program with the FuHsing school and she was kind enough to invite me out. I was greeted by an amazing lady, Ms. Vernestine Kent. I was so impressed by her love of education and her dedication to Beginning Teachers and their success. I then found out she was a former NC Teacher of the Year! I really enjoyed talking with this group about facilitive instruction. Knightdale High is fortunate to have such amazing BTs and such an inspiring BT coordinator. Thanks for having me attend guys! I really enjoyed it!
Following my visit to Knightdale, I hurried to my EPFP meeting. I always look forward to attending those, but I was exceptionally excited this week! Our speakers were Dr. Dudley Flood and Dr. Gene Causby. What a dynamic duo! They talked about their work across NC as school systems faced the task of desegregation. I could have listened to these two all evening. Their stories were full of humor and lessons to be learned.
On Wednesday I spent time in my office and observing teachers.
On Thursday I spent the morning at Millbrook High School so that I could see some great teaching and NC FALCON/formative assessment at work in a Mathematics class. Mr. Jason Sinquefield was kind enough to allow me to observe his Algebra II class. I feared being in over my head as math was never my best subject, but I survived and much to my relief, I actually remember this stuff! The students worked in cooperative groups and formative assessment was as it should be...painless, simple and informative! The students were truly engaged and Mr. Sinquefield is a dynamic teacher!
Following a brief opportunity to talk about RttT and its impact on teachers I journeyed to Alamance County to make a surprise announcement! I love surprises, don't you? Congratulations to Mrs. Tyronna Hooker from Graham Middle School (Alamancel-Burlington Schools) as she was named the North Central Regional Teacher of the Year. She is truly an amazing lady! Congratulations Mrs. Hooker and enjoy every moment!
On Friday, I had the opportunity to join my son's 4th grade class at Midway Elementary School as we toured various places in Raleigh. We visited the Governor's Mansion, the old State Capital, the Legislative Building, and the museums. It was a fun, informative and busy day!
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