6Pack Rollout: Professional Development
Dear Godwin Faculty,
The start of a new school year brings with it the excitement of meeting new students, developing new lesson plans, and creating new relationships within our community. Included in this excitement this year is a professional development plan that was crafted in response to your feedback from last year. The administrative team takes your feedback very seriously and spent time over the summer re-designing professional development to be significantly more user-friendly and less demanding of all teachers’ already limited time. We believe that our new “6Pack of Education” will be a game-changer for each and every one of you!
Henrico County will continue to emphasize developing curriculum and lesson plans that emphasize the “6 Cs” of the Henrico Learner’s Profile – citizenship, collaboration, communication, creativity, character, and critical thinking. Your team here at Godwin realizes that past professional development had a “flavor of the month” type of feel, in that teachers were not truly given time to develop, implement, and practice new instructional plans nor were teachers given the time to seek out, receive, and respond to feedback on their professional development. That changes today.
Beginning today, and continuing moving forward, we want you to know that the 6Pack Model values experimentation and gives all of you permission to break away from traditional practice. With the decreased emphasis on the number of required SOL tests for graduation, now is the perfect time to develop content that emphasizes the 6 Cs of the HLP. Administrators have pledged to cover at least 3 classes for any teachers who want time to observe their peers, learn more technology, or boost their pedagogy. All teachers have permission to try new lessons, play with new technologies, and take more educational risks. The administration team is committed to be partners in this exciting re-design of our curricula.
Professional development will be part of every faculty meeting, but it will be limited to 30 minutes at a time. Many teachers shared that they preferred short, impactful lessons over half-day or day-long professional development that often left them overwhelmed and short on time. Additionally, each faculty meeting will focus on only one aspect of the Henrico Learner’s Profile. We believe that a deliberate and methodical approach will give each of you a chance to reflect on your practice.
Much like our students deserve a personal and differentiated approach to their learning, the 6Pack model will act as that for our teachers. Additionally, every session of professional development will offer you a choice on what you would like to focus on. We believe that teacher-led teams who have a “voice and choice” on what to focus on will have a greater impact than any county-led professional development. For example, teachers who want to improve their pedagogy can form a group and teachers who want to bolster their content knowledge can do just that as well.
The 6Pack model values teachers as professionals who want to proactively improve their practice. Starting today and continuing into the future, each of you has a greater degree of freedom in professional development than ever before. We are here to support you any way possible.