Our Master Teacher Development Program
I'd like to share with you a bit of what our teachers will be covering in our monthly staff development meetings this academic year. We meet the second Friday of each month to discuss educational ideas, study books corporately, and take practical steps toward high quality classroom and facility-wide instruction. These meetings are an excellent time for us to build both skills and relationships, and I'm pleased with the plans for our year ahead. Specifically, we've begun a Master Teacher Development Program, partnering with the Association of Classical and Christian Schools, to informally initiate the process of school accreditation and teacher certification. This development program has three stages each teacher will progress through:
- An Apprentice Teacher
- A Journeyman Teacher
- A Master Teacher
And though all of our teachers are already well beyond an "apprentice" phase as it is typically understood, this and other stages involve a number of stimulating rubrics: 1) reading requirements, 2) regular classroom observations, 3) ongoing educational conference attendance, and 3) one-on-one development meetings with administration.
Further, under each stage, we'll be aiming for three goals:
- Our teachers should actively embody specific Christian virtues
- Our teachers should actively exemplify classical teaching practices
- Our teachers should possess and gain knowledge of classical education in their main content area
This is a lengthy but beautiful process of teaching development that I'm eager to oversee in the coming years at ACA. We are already blessed by high quality teaching, and we want to further ensure that each and every year, our teachers are reaching hearts and minds, developing their own love of learning, and becoming influencers of educational culture in their own ways.
If you have any questions about this program, I'd love to share more over a meeting. You can also find out more about the Association of Classical and Christian Schools here on their website.
