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The Waltham Public Schools district has a fierce commitment to achieving its mission.
We provide a world-class education to all students by developing their heads, hearts, hands, and voices, and to inspire them to become critical thinkers, problem-solvers, designers, builders, innovators and social entrepreneurs who make contributions to our diverse communities, nation, and global world.
We provide a world-class education to all students by developing their heads, hearts, hands, and voices, and to inspire them to become critical thinkers, problem-solvers, designers, builders, innovators and social entrepreneurs who make contributions to our diverse communities, nation, and global world.
Waltham is currently providing a world-class education to many of its students. The aim of providing a world-class education to EACH AND EVERY student cannot be achieved by simply doing more of what we are already doing. We need to learn to do something new. We need to retool our systems, build a repertoire of new practices and rethink some of our beliefs in order to produce the results we want: equity and excellence for every student.
To ensure each student is getting what they need to learn, we need a professional learning system that ensures each adult in the WPS is getting what they need to learn.
We need an educator-driven, student-focused Professional Development System.
To address this need, in January 2019, the WPS convened an 18-month working group: The Leading & Learning for Equity (LLE) Network. This 50-member team of cross-role educators was charged with creating a three-year professional development plan that could strategically support the goals of equity and excellence, as outlined in its Accelerated Improvement Plan.
The plan has a clear vision, 12 criteria for effective professional development, and 4 key components to ensure PD experiences meet these criteria:
PD Menus
Common Exit Slips
Impact Tracker
PD Committee
The WPS Professional Development System ensures that all adults continuously learn in order to be empowered professionals who improve and sustain systems that produce equitable and excellent outcomes for each and every student.
Professional Development System- FINAL (June 2020).pdfThe plan introduces four new KEY COMPONENTS that support coherence within a unified vision for improvement, coordinate the array of opportunities available to educators across different roles and ensure these opportunities are implemented as part of a cycle of continuous improvement.
Click below to learn about each.
Click below to learn about each.
PD Menus
PD Menus
PD Menus balance individual learning needs with organizational learning needs in context of PD hours, Job-Embedded PD and Individualized PD.
Exit Slips
Exit Slips
Common Exit Slips monitor educators’ perceptions of whether learning experiences are meeting their expectations and needs.
Impact Tracker
Impact Tracker
The new Impact Tracker will provide easy access to data and other evidence for monitoring the impact of professional learning experiences on students.
PD Committee
PD Committee
The PD Committee ensures PD experiences meet the criteria for our WPS Vision of Professional Learning, uses data to identify learning priorities, and continually improves the PD System.
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