By Andrew Sigal
The Internationals Network for Public Schools (INPS) partnered with the Carnegie Corporation of New York and Springpoint to open the International High School at Langley Park and the International High School at Largo in 2015. Along with additional partners, Prince George’s County Public Schools, and CASA de Maryland, the schools were designed to serve English language learners (ELLs), many of whom are newly arrived immigrants.
Since the launch of these two schools, professional development (PD) and the cultivation of a positive learning community have been major levers in supporting our students.
As the Instructional Coach at INPS, I’ve supported our schools in honing an adaptive and enriching PD approach. Our robust PD sessions have strong content, but what makes these two high schools really special is how our teachers learn. For example, we use an INPS pillar called One Learning Model for All, which at first glance sounds like we think all teachers and students learn in the same style; but that’s not the case at all. Rather, it means that the way we present information to teachers will inform how they present information to their students. That is why every inch of our PD at IHS-Largo and IHS-Langley Park includes the instructional strategies, skills, and language that we would want our teachers to use with their students.
This summer, our PD focused on developing our school community, increasing our teachers’ ability to integrate content and language within the curriculum, and improving the quality of our assessments.
We focused on teacher collaboration and empathy building as a way to develop our school community. To this end, each teacher read Enrique’s Journey, a novel about how one young person, Enrique, emigrated from Mexico. For each chapter of the book, teachers gave a presentation, featuring an instructional strategy or activity that they would use in their own classroom. For example, one teacher used the give one, get one strategy where “students” move around the room sharing and receiving ideas. This set up a culture of collaboration among teachers, who loved learning from each other. They became comfortable asking questions and sharing ideas, all while deepening empathy and understanding for their students’ unique experiences. Our staff grew closer, not just from the content found within Enrique’s Journey but also from participating in a learning process together.
Given our large ELL population, increasing our teachers’ ability to integrate content and language within their curriculum was another core focus for which we used a series of workshops created by INPS. Each workshop was carefully planned to model classroom structures that best support language acquisition. For example, we grouped teachers based on a variety of skills, similar to student groupings that are designed to support language growth.
And it’s working. Just recently, an English teacher at IHS-Largo provided this useful feedback about the workshop: “I structured my mastery project using the same format as the model project you showed us during the Content and Language Integration Workshop.”
We are encouraged to hear that teachers are implementing projects and instructional strategies similar to those we use in our workshop. But this workshop did not just model what a good project looks like, it immersed teachers in strategies such as purposeful groupings, station activities, card sorts, gallery walks, and group roles. Teachers need to participate in workshops (not just listen) and come away knowing what good instruction feels like so they can, in turn, provide it to their students.
The final focus of our summer PD was to revisit the quality of our assessments. We had teachers participate in walkthroughs and norm together to align and prioritize aspects of student assessment through the lens of mastery-based learning. In other words, we wanted to get teachers to backwards design starting with skills, not content. They also broke into interdisciplinary teams that shared curriculum using a tuning protocol, a format for discussing curriculum feedback. Each one of these activities emphasized the importance of collaboration to achieve growth. Once again, the content we discussed was important, but the process is what will inform teacher practice the most.
The walkthroughs, the protocols, and the norming sessions are all repeatable structures that can be used over and over again with or without facilitators. By focusing on the process of learning rather than simply the content, we empowered our teachers with PD that not only helps them grow in the moment but will lead to growth throughout the entire school year.
One Learning Model for All is an INPS core value because it sets expectations for administrators, teachers, and students to learn in a collaborative environment. At IHS-Largo and IHS-Langley Park, teachers are empowered to become yearlong learners by developing an awareness of how their students learn.
Principals Carlos Beato and Alison Hanks-Sloan understood that the goal of summer PD at an Internationals High School is not to become experts on a few instructional strategies—it is to provide a framework for teachers to talk about their instruction throughout the year. We should not think of summer PD as having a beginning and an end. Summer PD is the start of a yearlong journey taken by teachers and administrators alike.