Our Goals
If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. -Antione de Saint-Exupery
OECD TALIS (Teaching and Learning International Survey) report defines the professional development of a teacher as “Activities that develop an individual’s skills, knowledge, expertise and other characteristics as a teacher”. The purpose of professional learning and development is to apply skills and strategies which improve knowledge and learning transfer effectively.
According to the results of research on the professional development of teachers, they want their professional development training to have certain qualities such as being consistent with the feedback provided and having high-quality and relevant content which could be easily applied in learning environments. The most basic expectation is for them to contribute to the learning experience of the student.
At the Professional Learning Center (PLC), while progressing towards the Teacher Academy in harmony with the strategical plan, vision, mission, and values of Hisar School, we may list our key goals as follows:
Planning and Organization
- Analyze the needs of staff regularly through surveys and focus groups,
- Align the PD opportunities with the strategic plan, the performance evaluation system, professional development plan of employees and artifact of and evidence from teaching and learning,
- Collaborate with the school administration on academic, financial and staffing requirements,
- Partner up with experts and institutions for receiving and/or providing supervision,
- Evaluate the PD requests put forward by the staff, departments and school administrations within the confines of the school’s mission, vision, strategic plan and budget,
- Develop guidelines for all the items stated in this list.
Resources
- Analyze the in-school employee resource and utilizing human capital effectively,
- Create a shared library of resources,
- Manage financial resources,
- Develop digital platform, where every training, best practices are shared, that is updated, reachable and easy- to use,
- Create a physical and digital space where staff regularly communicate and share best practices and challenging experiences,
- Create an environment where teachers, departments and school administration work together to develop instructional designs and integrated course materials. (Instructional Design Lab)
Trainings
- Plan external and in-house PD programs for both academic faculty and administrative staff and schedule an implementable school wide calendar,
- Develop the type and number of training programs and design the scope(content) and the curriculum of these programs,
- Develop instruments to assess the effectiveness of PD and impact analysis,
- Train leading educator trainers/facilitators and utilize the existing trainers,
- Train instructional coaches through ToT,
- Design learning walks and instructional rounds, peer observations and create a volunteer coaching system among teachers to support effective learning and teaching,
- Develop an orientation program for new staff and establish a multi-year arc of seminar programs in collaboration with school administrations, centers and academic and administrative departments.
Research
- Carry out research projects on current educational trends and global challenges and changes in education and share the findings with Hisar community and beyond,
- Motivate staff to take part in multi- and inter- disciplinary research and development projects.