Phillips answers on professional development and assessment
Phillips describes professional development partnerships with Robin Hood and Bank Street, and the use of Teaching Strategies Gold for authentic assessment. She notes qualifications for staff working with two-year-olds.
Thank you for that question and for witnessing that.
Yes, we are working on a lot of different professional development for our teachers and for our staff within the division, for our educational leaders as we are expanding into 2K.
Caring for infants and toddlers is a skill set that we want to make sure that all of our educators have.
So we've worked with Robin Hood.
We have a new partnership with Bank Street, which might have been that event that you went to.
They were there also.
Right, that you went to.
And so they are providing professional development on the social-emotional.
learning of toddlers and making sure that our instructional coaches are working directly with our educators.
In terms of the assessment and how we're looking at this, we are using an authentic assessment tool called Teaching Strategies Gold, and we will be using that to assess
how that classroom is being ran and the type of experiences that the young children are receiving.
So the ones who are working now with the two-year-olds in those districts, they already, as teachers, have had some kind of training that would mirror what I saw or not yet?
Like, well, they picked maybe because they had the training.
Absolutely, yes.
So there are qualifications, including experience working with young children for all of the staff.
And we know that there are a lot more opportunities and places where we can provide support, particularly around working with children who might have developmental delays, supporting family engagement.
It's a bit of both.