This year we are partnering with our experts at NKCES to bring a variety of ongoing, sustained, personalized and reflective opportunities for professional learning. 

Participants in this format will choose one of the options below and participate as a community of learners throughout the course of the year.  Each cadre will open up with a training in the afternoon on the August 11 District PD Day, and will meet periodically through the rest of the year. 

Grab a printable version of the information below by clicking here

If you would like to propose your own cadre to lead, scroll down to the bottom for the proposal form.

District Lead: Alyssa Vanderpool

Strategic Plan:  Student Experiences and Opportunities, Positive and Engaged Culture

Take a deep dive into the Visual and Performing Arts Standards and learn ways to implement data driven strategies from newly adopted resources (such as GamePlan, Purposeful Pathways, etc.) that will enhance comprehension and provide rich engagement in the music classroom.

Dates 

August 11

September 18 - 3:30-4:30

October 16 - 3:30-4:30

November 13 - 3:30 - 4:30

January 22 - 3:30-4:30

February 12 - 3:30-4:30

March 18 - 3:30 - 4:30

District Lead: Nikki Everett

Strategic Plan: Student Experiences and Opportunities, Individual Student Growth, Positive and Engaged Culture, Achievement, Portrait of a Graduate

This course will cover teaching methods to create an effective student-centered art studio that will instill confidence in students and develop assessment, advocacy, and classroom management strategies for the art program. 

Each session, teachers will share current practices and develop ways that to apply new strategies into their personal classrooms.

Dates

August 11

9/27, 

10/25, 

11/29,

1/31, 

2/28, 

3/27 

*tentative

District Lead: Barbara Carrasquel, Silvia McClamrock, Heather Turner, Julie Dashley

Strategic Plan:  Individual Student Growth

"The study of language usually focuses on Spanish and other World Languages while separating English being taught to speakers of other languages. However, the two fields are slowly merging. Right now, our approach as a district is ahead of many others but it is still lacking. At the elementary level, the Spanish and English teachers are lucky to have strong backgrounds in language acquisition. There is an opportunity for us to be forward thinking and learn from best practices in teaching Spanish, as exemplified in “The Big Book of Comprehensible Input,” and teaching English, as shown in “Making Content Comprehensible for English Learners.” 

This cadre provides the Fort Thomas School District a unique opportunity to further explore the national trends of language acquisition as it applies to all languages; and in the process foster comprehensible and inclusive instructional strategies that benefit students no matter their native language or what languages they have acquired or continue to acquire. 

As Bryce Hedstrom states in “The Big CI Book”, we will base our professional development on, “Strategies that simplify and make comprehensible input instruction work for you”. After this cadre study, we will be able to practice these successful CI strategies including stories, in our classrooms, with confidence. Our goal is to read and process his advice together and immediately implement it and then reflect on our experiences together for our next meeting. This is the beauty of the cadre continuing throughout the year instead of in a large chunk at the beginning and the end. 

Dates 

August 11

September 2023 (1 hour)

October 2023 (1 hour)

November 2023 (1 hour) 

January 2024 (1 hour)

February 2024 (1 hour)

March 2024 (1 hour)

District Leads: Stacey Behrensmeyer and Nina Kearns

Strategic Plan:  Student Experiences and Opportunities, Individual Student Growth, Positive and Engaged Culture, Achievement, Portrait of a Graduate

Continuing work from 2023-2024, the AP Teacher Cadre is a collaboration of AP teachers across the curriculum to improve the AP course offerings and to provide the most meaningful AP experience for all students.

By having time to collaborate and share, AP teachers in all content areas will be able to learn about new resources, teaching techniques, and best practices from our colleagues. Upon implementation of these ideas, teachers will be able to share successes and challenges with each other during our regular monthly meetings. The hope is that we will all be able to work collaboratively to create shared experiences, shared resources, shared activities, and shared success. Regular dedicated time for collaboration and reflection will be vital to the success of this cadre.

Dates and Topics

August 11

Monthly on a Monday TBD

Click to register here

Please fill in this form indicating your intent to register

Each cohort group (K-5, SPED, Reading specialists) will engage in professional learning over two years and cover eight professional learning units on topics essential for literacy instruction, including phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, comprehension, writing and assessment. Each unit will include asynchronous, self-paced study and six hours of facilitator-led learning. Participants must commit to completing the full two-year course and will devote approximately an hour each week plus six hours for each unit for live training to complete the program. 

Teachers will receive 4 sub days to work with their learning group for each facilitator-led training + 9 hours of District Level PD