NICL In-Service

This past Friday, October 14, an all-day, all-conference in-service was held.  This was our district's second year to be involved in this endeavor.  All of our PK - 8 certified staff went to Grundy Center, and all of the 9 - 12 certified staff went to Waterloo.  The PrK - 8 staff were fortunate to have Jason Glass, the Director of Education in Iowa, speak about the new educational Blueprint that recently became public.  It was good to hear from the "Top Dog" and have him answer some questions from the crowd.

After Mr. Glass's address, the large group of 600 educators was organized into many smaller groups to be presented material on Characteristics of Effective Instruction for the Iowa Core curriculum.  This session lasted for about an hour and a half before lunch.

After lunch, the same small groups met to discuss classroom management - rules and procedures.  Then, after that hour or so session, various technology sessions were held.

My opinion of this day, you might ask?  Well, it was good to get out of our district for a day and hear our state's educational leader, as well as collaborate with educators from other schools in our conference.  This day was not too long and tedious, either, with he first session starting at 9:00 and the last being over at 2:30.  One thing I would change for next year would be to not have such a large group of educators meet in one location.  That is quite an event to plan, and although the Grundy Center superintendent, Cass Murra, and her staff did a super job hosting, I feel it would be a more productive day if just a few districts got together.  That way, more time could be given for more collaboration on topics such as our often used acronyms, PLCs, IPIs, and DLTs.  It would also be good for like subject areas and levels to collaborate on curriculum and teaching practices and special projects and activities.  I know I would have appreciated time with other curriculum directors and/or principals, too.

Now that the dust has settled from this big day, we administrators from the many conference schools will get some feedback from our teachers, and the in-service evaluations will be tabulated.  Hopefully, positive changes will be made for next fall.