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In-service program documentation
Celebrating the journey together (D8.3)
Logistics and scheduling information (by Raffaella Borasi)
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| Choices of focus and format for the celebration |
| Scheduling of the celebration |
Choice of format and focus for the celebration
At the end of the professional development program, we think it is important that all participants recognize the learning and accomplishments that were achieved as a result of the program, so as to be reassured that the time and energy devoted to the program were "well spent", and to be encouraged to continue the process of instructional innovation thus initiated. We have tried to accomplish this goal in the last project-wide meeting in a few complementary ways.
First of all, as we believe that nothing convinces teachers of the worthiness of a proposed innovation as seeing what students can gain from it, we have invited all participants to report on the "inquiry units", or lessons, taught during the year and especially to share selected examples of their students' work that illustrate the benefits and shortcomings of the new approach. This sharing has the added benefit of informing teachers in different schools of new units that have been successfully developed and could be used as resources for their own teaching the following year.
We have also scheduled a session where participants are invited to share more informally the insights they gained over the year about teaching mathematics through inquiry, so as to further everybody's understanding of the potential of this approach to mathematics instruction.
Finally, we have tried to encourage some brainstorming and discussion about plans for the future -- as inevitably participants recognize that a one-year program can only begin the process of school mathematics reform, and should be encouraged to think about concrete ways to continue this process building on the collaboration among teachers and teacher educators developed over the course of the program.
Scheduling of the celebration
As shown by the agenda reproduced below, the experiences identified above have usually taken up the whole of the last project-wide meeting, which has usually been scheduled for an entire day towards the "official" end of the participants' field experiences (i.e., June in the case of Implementation A, and February in the case of Implementations B/C):
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Note that, in order to encourage participants to make connections with teachers from different schools and pursue the possibility of future collaborations, we have usually scheduled long breaks during this meeting.
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