Page 18 - Alumni Horae: Vol. 94, No. 1 Fall 2013

18
PETER FINGER
Second-year teaching fellow Ishiaka Mansaray now teaches his own section of Physics First.
Strategic Vision for St. Paul’s School: Education toward
a Greater Good, calls for an increased focus on profes-
sional development.
“The plan reflects very closely my charge to the Strategic
Planning Committee that our next efforts must address,
more than any other concern, the student experience,”
says Hirschfeld. “To ensure the depth of that experi-
ence requires that our faculty be composed of the most
outstanding teachers, made even better with adequate
support for their continuing professional development.”
Many SPS faculty members already have benefited
from participation in the School’s Ongoing Professional
Learning program (OPL), which includes guest-observer
travel by SPS faculty and reciprocal visits from colleagues
at peer schools. The OPL takes place in a faculty mem-
ber’s first and third years of employment, and every
fourth year thereafter, with participants earning 15
hours of professional development for their efforts.
“One of the greatest benefits is simply working collab-
oratively with teachers at other schools and breaking down
the barriers that somehow exist between schools,” says
Smith. “We are all in the same business and collaborat-
ing promotes good will, a free exchange of ideas, better
teaching, and opportunities for learning for all concerned.”
SPS science teacher Carlin Aloe rearranged her class-
room after spending a day observing history classes at
St. George’s and witnessing the change in atmosphere
when students were facing one another in a circle. Now
Aloe is working with longtime science teacher Theresa
Gerardo-Gettens to eliminate teaching from a textbook
in the anatomy and physiology classroom, building the
curriculum instead on case studies. Second-year SPS
faculty member Julie Cepiel is working with Aloe to do
similar work in biology, limiting the traditional focus
of getting through the unwieldy textbook and instead
focusing on the core concepts of the subject to help
breed deeper understanding in her students. They use
an approach called “the flipped classroom” – recorded
lectures are available for students to watch at their own
pace in the evenings, and homework and activities are
done collaboratively during class time.
In Physics First, required for all Third Formers, Cham-
berlain is leading a project-oriented curriculum. Second-
year SPS teacher Emily Hewitt has “lost the textbook” in
her courses as well, describing her classroom as “more
like a research lab than a traditional classroom,” where
students use the tools of molecular biology to investigate
other topics in science.
In September, a couple of weeks into the Fall Term,
first-year fellow Lester Batiste accompanied mentor
Alisa Barnard ’94, humanites teacher and SPS dean of
studies, on what Smith calls a “walkabout” – visiting
as many classes as possible in a 60-minute block to
get an idea of the different atmospheres and teaching
styles from one classroom to the next. Between class
visits, Barnard and Batiste discussed their observa-
tions: whether the teacher was lecturing more or if the
class was conducted in a discussion format, how the
classroom was organized, what the seating and light-
ing were like and how that might impact the learning
environment. The duo visited a dance class conducted by
Dance Director Jennifer Howard ’92 and discussed how
her methods required physical demonstration. Theatre
Director David Valdes’s Introduction to Acting class was
reflective, asking students to perform a scene and then
dissect it on the spot to evaluate their own performances
– learning on the fly. Jorge Pardo’s advanced Spanish
class featured a casual seating arrangement and a com-
plete conversational approach – all in the foreign language.
Veteran faculty members have been invited and encour-
aged to arrange their own walkabouts to glean knowledge
from how their colleagues conduct their classrooms –
an opportunity they have not traditionally made time for
in the busy daily schedule. Smith has introduced profes-
sional development lunch sessions in the Upper, with
opportunities for growth built into the workday.
“The real beauty with the Penn program is that you
have structured conversations about teaching – thought-
ful, built-in, reflective practice, which is incredible,” says
Hirschfeld. “One of the incredible benefits of the program
has been the leaching of that kind of thinking onto the
mentors; these young people are leading hugely important