I had a great afternoon working with the department chairs at Incarnate Word Academy last week. Despite having taught through a really rough year with COVID 19 ever present, I found this group ready and willing to dig in a learn and think! We were working on ways to increase student engagement across the curriculum and integrate projects with alternative assessments. Not only were they highly engaged during the challenging science activities I used to demonstrate the ideas, but this group of teachers was on fire thinking about how to apply the ideas to their own classrooms and content.
It would be easy for teachers to hang out and not do any work this summer. And believe me, they deserve the time off after the year they just had. This group embraced every idea and quickly tried to think about how to go and teach their own colleagues in their department about what they learned. I really was a bit nervous, to be honest. before I arrived. It was the middle of July and they were spending two days on a department chair retreat. I was scheduled for the afternoon of day two. The grit and perseverance I experienced from them and their leadership, gave me energy! I think they had some new ideas to think about at the end of the day, had some fun with electricity and hopefully have their wheels spinning about how to engage their teammates in August.
I look forward to continuing to work with this group of impressive faculty as they work to enrich and make their curriculum more engaging for their students.
I only wish I had more pictures! Thanks to IWA for their openness and willingness to play and laugh and think.