GCI

File: GCI

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN

Professional Development Mission

The purpose of the West Springfield Public Schools is to educate all students, enabling them to experience the joy of reaching their full potential. To assure that this mission is accomplished, WSPS is committed to offering meaningful, research-based, sustained professional development activities that will have a direct impact on student achievement. These activities will strive to meet district, state and federal target goals as well as be aligned with Massachusetts Curriculum Framework Standards and benchmarks.

The West Springfield Public Schools have referenced four areas for district professional development as recommended by the Department of Education. The focus for staff development resources, structures, time and funding has foundation on the following priorities:

    • Expand teachers’ knowledge of the subject matter of the school curriculum
  • Extend teachers’ familiarity with, and use of the Massachusetts learning standards and Curriculum Frameworks in planning classroom curricula
  • Provide educators with opportunities to evaluate a range of common pedagogical practices in their subject areas and to determine when different practices are most effective
  • Raise expectations for student achievement

Features of Effective Professional Development in West Springfield Public Schools are identified with the following critical guideline questions for all professional development activities:

  • Are they intellectually challenging?
  • Do they add to the participants’ skills and content knowledge?
  • Do they enhance educators’ contributions to the school community?
  • Do they lead to improvement in teaching practices?

Elements of the West Springfield Public Schools’ Professional Development Plan include:

  • Focus on clearly defined goals and priorities for district-sponsored professional development
  • Alignment of professional development resources with district academic goals
  • Evaluation of professional development activities
  • Coordination of professional development activities across the district

The structure of the West Springfield Public Schools’ Professional Development plan:

  • Fosters a professional learning community that encourages teachers to work together, not in isolation
  • Encourages educators to solicit feedback from each other to improve their practice
  • Identifies effective models for delivering professional development in order to accomplish each of the indicated plan priorities
  • Emphasizes content-based offerings
  • Requires individual School Improvement Plans to outline how professional development is linked to improving student achievement
  • Provides ongoing, yearlong assistance to educators
  • Includes methods and procedures for evaluating the quality of each offering

Components of Effective WSPS Professional Development Offerings:

  • Align with district and School Improvement goals
    • Encourages teams of teachers working together
    • Focuses on content knowledge
    • Provides on-the-job, ongoing support throughout the school year
  • Includes follow-up activities in the educator’s own classroom
  • Connects professional development to the workplace and encourages teachers to develop curriculum and lesson plans that show students real world applications of their learning
    • Utilizes in-class observation of educators by mentors or peers
  • Requires evidence of learning, documentation of implementation or product from participants, such as lesson plans, curriculum units or curriculum maps.

Financial Aspects of the West Springfield Public Schools’ Professional Development Plan:

  • Includes analysis of current spending
  • Focuses spending on priority areas, such as literacy and mathematics and other subject areas in attaining proficiency in MCAS
  • Uses external funding sources to support the overall district plan, rather than implementing separate systems for utilizing each source of funding
  • Ensures that spending is aligned with district goals

LEGAL REFS.: M.G.L. 71:38; 71: 40; 71:43; and 188 of the Acts of 1985

Read, reviewed, approved: January 15, 2019 [Policy Subcommittee] (no changes)

Approved: February 14, 2019 [School Committee]