Over the course of the past 3 years, Professional learning in Halton has taken some big steps forward. Along with the traditional workshops and institutes, where teachers listen to subject leaders and walk away with new resources and ideas, teachers now have the chance to dig deeper!
Throughout Halton, teachers are given the opportunity to work as part of collaborative inquiry teams. One example is the Formal ICT Inquiry, where three school teams of teachers are matched, create theory of action statements and then spend 3 days co-planning and co-teaching. The chance to network with other teachers, visit other schools and observe student engagement is invaluable!
As well, many schools are beginning to embrace the collaborative inquiry model for the staff meetings, whereby teachers identify an area of need, develop theory of action statements and use staff meeting time, as well as some release time to investigate, plan, execute and review their findings. My school was one of the first schools to go this route and it has since served as the model for Principal Collaborative Inquiry teams!
Halton has also started to use Google+ Communities for groups of teachers to network around common areas of interest. This allows for easy sharing of ideas, up to date news and great collaboration!
Halton also supports teachers who are willing to attend conferences. For the past 3 years, Halton has paid for staff to attend the GAFE Summit in Kitchener. And fortunately for me, our school Admin has supported my request to take staff to the Brock Technology showcase.
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