What can teachers learn from talking to other teachers about teaching — and from watching other teachers teach?
Lots of things, it turns out.
That’s what three diocesan teachers discovered during a recent, months-long professional development opportunity that allowed them to collaborate with their colleagues, observe other teachers at work in the classroom and to sharpen instructional skills.
Offered through Teach Learn Thrive — a consultancy of former D.C.-area teacher Sarah Dugan — the experience is one universally praised by the educators who spoke with the Catholic Herald.
Each emphasized that because they teach in “single track” schools with only one class per grade, the chance to discuss their grade with other teachers was invaluable.
“We don’t really have the ability to plan or bounce ideas off another teacher at the same grade level,” said Joanne G. Conway, a second grade teacher at Holy Family School in Dale City.
“While we don’t plan together, we do talk about where we’re at in our curriculum, or what’s happening socially with kids, or things like that,” she said.
Mary Dixon, a fourth grade teacher at Blessed Sacrament School in Alexandria, agreed.
“It was so helpful to me as a teacher in a single-track school to be with other people who are teaching the same students the same things,” she said. “It’s just made my life so much easier to know that I wasn’t alone.”
Teaching the tiniest pupils comes with the same need for professional alliances.
“The opportunity to collaborate, to discuss, to learn from other teachers who are in the same area and same grade has been fantastic,” said Sara Ham, a kindergarten teacher also at Holy Family.
Through Teach Learn Thrive, Conway, Dixon, and Ham were immersed in theories of Universal Design for Learning, or UDL, which, according to Cornell University’s Center for Teaching Innovation, “is a teaching approach that works to accommodate the needs and abilities of all learners and eliminates unnecessary hurdles in the learning process.”
“I learned so much about UDL processes and how to put that into the classroom,” Conway said. “But also being able to learn about that and hear about it through the rest of the second grade teachers throughout the diocese really made an impact for me.”
“Sometimes it’s just giving choice to the students,” Dixon said. “To say, ‘My goal is … do they understand the general concept of the book?’ You don’t have to have them write a three-paragraph paper on the book. They can draw a picture. They could do a cartoon. They could write a play. Focus on what the goal is and give them choice.”
For Ham, the process is dynamic.
“I feel like I’ve learned so many things about how to make them have more ownership of their learning,” she said.
Observing teachers in a classroom setting also was useful.
“We got to visit a school and watch some teachers at work — and that was really beneficial for me,” said Conway. “I learned things just in that day that kind of clicked in my head.”
Such professional development efforts align with the diocesan strategic plan, especially initiative No. 14, emphasizing recruitment and retention. It reads: “Identify promising approaches for attracting and retaining teachers in our schools. Engage priests, faculty, teachers and parents from across the Diocese to develop approaches that attract and retain qualified and faith-filled teachers.”
Conway, Dixon and Ham valued face-to-face collaboration opportunities most of all.
“We would talk about, not just the curriculum and how we were going to get that across, but the things teachers struggle with now — like attention span,” Conway said. “It’s a huge thing, especially for kids who get a lot of screen time. And then the entertainment factor, where kids come in and they want to be entertained.”
And while online opportunities exist to share ideas and experiences, for Dixon, it’s not the same.
“When I’m in a room with people … it’s human beings,” she emphasized. “It’s really easy to make connections with other teachers.”
For Ham, who instructs a student with special needs, linking with a teacher whose student has the same condition was transformational.
“To be able to say, ‘Oh, what are you doing? How are you helping?’ ” she explained. “You know, it’s just been a gift.”
Each teacher hopes to have the opportunity again.
“I wish they would continue it, or something like it,” said Conway. “Because without that, for (single-track teachers) it’s a little bit isolating.”
Heatherington is a freelancer in Alexandria.
