Professional Development Focuses on Relevance and Unconscious Bias
In recent years, Principia School teachers have had two weeks of professional development before the start of school, but this year they had four—the entire month of August! Extending summer break for students gave administrators more time to meet state and county requirements for in-person instruction. And it gave faculty time to prepare for the different ways they might wind up teaching—in person, remotely, or some combination of the two.
Learning from Last Spring
A month of professional development underscores the School’s emphasis on continuous improvement. The days were varied: some sessions were in person; others, remote. Some were for all teachers; some focused on a single level or discipline. Some sessions were traditional talks; others were outdoor, collaborative activities. Some focused on theory; others were hands-on.
One of the objectives was to learn from the past spring’s disruptions that forced all teaching online. While everyone agreed that remote learning is not the best way to deliver a Principia education, teachers couldn’t just pretend it hadn’t happened. They had to think through how to improve remote instruction (should they need to return to it) and how to apply the lessons from the spring experience to boost in-person learning. For Assistant Head of School for Innovation and Strategy Peter Dry, relevance is key to both. Even when students are on campus, the curriculum needs to be so relevant that it can hold their interest in spite of distractions. Toward that end, teachers spent part of August retooling their lessons to make them more relevant.
Uncovering Bias
Another focus of the August sessions related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. The faculty’s summer reading assignment was Unconscious Bias in Schools: A Developmental Approach to Exploring Race and Racism by Tracey Benson and Sarah Fiarman. During the first week of professional development, Fiarman gave talks and held workshops (virtually) to help teachers understand how unconscious bias affects students and how to identify their own biases. Making race a regular topic of conversation is a key starting point. The authors call this “cultivating a brave community.” One might think of it as gaining fluency in a new language. The more teachers talk with each other about race in everyday conversations, the readier they are to address race-related issues and biases when they arise.
Faculty response to Fiarman’s virtual visit was quite positive. Many wished she had “stayed” longer, and some would have preferred more presentations from her and fewer breakout sessions with peers. One of her points—windows and mirrors—surfaced again and again in the feedback as particularly helpful. Briefly, it involved choosing among a diverse selection of images or artwork something that mirrored your experience—the setting, family composition, activity, etc. Next, participants chose an image that opened a window onto something unfamiliar. The point was that every student should get to see him or herself reflected in classroom materials. And every student should discover new vistas in the materials as well.
While that may seem obvious, it takes effort to cultivate that kind of diversity—in attitude and practice. As one teacher mused in the feedback, “[I’m] thinking about how I can provide more mirrors for all of my students.”
Another summed up Fiarman’s visit from a spiritual perspective: “We need, in our prayers, to expect to be shown the human footsteps regarding how to handle these difficult situations. . . . The workshop really highlighted the need to be alert as to how my actions are affecting others and to use the tools, both practical and metaphysical, to treat all fairly and without . . . unconscious bias.”
That’s a tall order, but the August professional development sessions laid the groundwork for tackling it.