Professional Development Make-Up Plan

Today's blog will have important information on the plan to make up our missed professional development day on January 15th.  

Following the missed day on January 15th, feedback was gathered from the Professional Development Steering Committee and building principals.  Below is the plan for making up this day. The format will be online, self-paced learning with a district requirement and a building requirement.   This learning will take place outside of the contract day. 

District PD

To complete the district component of professional development, you will complete one of 2 modules to support English Learners at Southeast Polk. You may access your selected module on Southeast Polk University. This video provides a quick tutorial on accessing the catalog.

1. Click on Southeast Polk University.
2. Scroll through the courses and either select "Welcoming EL's into the Classroom" or "EL Instructional Strategies.' 
1. Effective Instructional Strategies for EL's: This course establishes the “how” for implementing  instructional scaffolds and strategies in order to support English Learners’ content and language development. (Learning Map) 

1. Welcoming EL's Into the Classroom: This course establishes the “why” and “how” to welcome English Learners (ELs) into our classrooms.  (Learning Map)

Building PD

To complete the building component of professional development, you will complete three modules in preparation for ISASP testing.  These include Test Security, Test Administration, and Adaptive Testing.

1. Go to ISASP LMS and sign in with your Southeast Polk email address. 

1. IMPORTANT: Your PearsonAccessNext (PAN) account must be active in order to sign into the LMS. If you are not able to sign in, contact Rob Timmins for support. 

2. Click on Catalog in the upper left corner.

            3. Complete each of the 3 trainings below: 

Important Notes

• These options are online and self-paced.
• The work will be completed outside the contract day.
• You may begin the work at any time.
• The District portion of PD must be completed by May 1st. 
• The Building portion of the PD must be completed by April 8th.
• If you do not have any part in ISASP administration, you may complete other required trainings or see your building principal for an alternative. 

We are meeting with Instructional Coaches on February 23rd.  If you have questions about this model, please share them with your coach, and we will address follow up questions in the blog.

Thank you to the PD Steering Committee for your input and feedback, and thank you to the Teaching and Learning team for preparing the online learning platforms. 

School Counseling Week/Black History Month

As we enter the month of February, there are many things to celebrate across our schools.

National School Counseling Week is celebrated this week, Feb 5-9, and highlights the unique contributions of school counselors and their tremendous impact on student success.  Nearly 120,000 school counselors provide students with academic, college/career and social/emotional development and our counselors here at SEP are among the very best.  We thank you for all you do for the students at Southeast Polk. 

February is Black History Month. Black History Month is an annual celebration of achievements by African Americans and a time for recognizing their central role in US history.  This is a great opportunity to showcase African-American culture & history as a part of teaching and learning at Southeast Polk.

Here are some resources to honor the month: 

• BlackHistoryMonth.gov 
• We are Teachers
• PBS
• Center for Civic Education
• Resources from the State Historical Museum