Educator Collaboration
STEM educators collaborate to develop, implement, and improve high quality STEM learning activities.
Concept 1 - STEM educators and leaders have formal, protected time scheduled on a regular and frequent basis to plan, revise, and improve STEM learning experiences and pedagogical best practices.
Concept 2 - Collaborative time for STEM staff and leadership is structured using a research-based model for effective educator collaboration.
Fairhope West Elementary teachers are given a regularly scheduled planning time to plan, revise, and improve their STEAM experiences. FWES created their STEAM leadership team, which is made up of representatives from each grade level team and resource teachers, four years ago. The professional learning team approach from the DuFour Model is used as the framework. Team members peer teach each other during collaborative meeting time.
The STEAM leadership team created Google Classrooms that correlate with the grade-level standards that are developed at the Pelican’s Nest Science Lab. Google Classrooms give a pre-lab and post-learning experience which activates schema for all students.
Collaborative planning days are mapped into our weekly schedules. Each grade level meets once a week alongside STEAM & reading coaches (bi-weekly) during physical education (planning) and enrichment blocks. All teams - have a consistent agenda that encourages each professional learning team (language arts, math, STEAM) to share from their collaborative learning.
FWES has an administrative lead team which consists of our STEAM coaches, Director of Pelican's Nest Science Lab, administrators, librarian, counselors and reading coaches. These leaders meet weekly to discuss and plan overarching issues that affect the whole school (i.e. budget, school reconfiguration, STEAM accreditation, professional development strategies, ways to ensure teacher support, ways to improve 21st century skills for teachers, and school goals.)
Sustaining Current Practice
Fairhope West’s strengths are the development and sustained use of collaborative planning times for each grade level and the continued meeting of our STEAM leadership team. Our actions to sustain our strengths include continuing our collaborative planning times for each grade level and professional learning teams. We will also continue our administrative lead team which includes all the curriculum coaches we have at our school.
Administrative Lead Team
STEAM coaches: Mr. Warner & Mrs. McKinney
Director of Pelicans Nest Science Lab: Mrs. Hardman
Administration: Mrs. Pierce, Dr. Logan, Mrs. Hollowell
Librarian: Mrs. Stejskal
Counselors: Mrs. Wellborn and Mrs. Wolchina
Reading coaches: Mrs. Hapworth and Mrs. Pruitt
Next Steps
Prior to the reconfiguration of schools, STEAM team planning was challenging due to the large number of team members per grade level. As a result of the reconfiguration process of our feeder pattern, Fairhope West Elementary now has fewer teachers within each grade level. This enables the opportunity for more frequent collaborative grade level planning times. However, due to circumstances beyond our control (COVID-19 and Hurricane Sally), our remaining challenge is time constraints.