As the School Year began for our Teaching and Ancillary Staff in Plainfield with an ambitious full-day schedule of Staff Development activities for all Core Curriculum Content Areas and Student Family Support Services, the Superintendent, Board and Administration welcomed all of the staff with a Continental Breakfast and a Rose. As the teaching and support staff returned to prepare for a new school year, this small yet poignant token of appreciation was a reminder to them that they are vital to the success of our students and our district. As Interim Superintendent Carter hinted in his Special Note to the Staff of August 27, 2007, it was “a special surprise significant of life and love and loftiness. We are about to strive for and reach new heights in 2007-2008, and we thank you in advance for insuring that we get there together.”
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Once the coffee and danish helped the eyes and minds warm up and the “welcome back, how was your summer” conversations subsided, all discussions turned to science, social studies, art, music, world languages, and physical education. Lead by our invited expert facilitators, our teachers began to focus on certain key areas that the administration and our District Supervisors deemed vital in order to start the new year with the right frame of reference, bringing everyone up-to-date on the latest technology, and focusing on the curriculum changes implemented over the summer.
Housed in six different locations across the district, in close to thirty classrooms, auditoriums, computer labs and the Plainfield Public Library, our 1200 teachers attended workshops titled “Interactive Notebooking and Essential Questions”, “Organisms: From Macro to Micro”, “The Plainfield Library as Cultural Community Learning Lab”, “Student Success through Challenges and Changes”, “Vocabulary in the Primary Classroom”, “Curriculum Mapping” and many other seminars and workshops. The primary focus on all of the meetings and workshops was the focus on providing the pupils who attend the Plainfield Public Schools a high quality education and to prepare them not only for the state tests which are administered later in the school year, but to also encourage them to be life-long learners.
In the past few years, two days had been set aside for Staff Development activities for our teachers. However, Interim Superintendent Carter felt it absolutely necessary that these activities be limited to one day so teachers could have a full day to get their classrooms ready for the pupils. As Superintendent Carter also explained in his letter to the Staff: “So there you have it - - a new year, a new administration, a new beginning! … Let’s make this a happy and productive school year !”
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