Professional Development with Bridgewater State University gives Red Cloud Teachers Access to Master Teachers
posted October 23, 2015
Sitting in the assistant principal’s office in the elementary school, Moira Coomes types away at her computer. “The great thing about this project is that we set these goals and we are now getting to a point where we are meeting them,” says Coomes who has served as Red Cloud Indian School’s curriculum director since 2012. “Now when new teachers come we can really give them more direction.”
For the past three years, Red Cloud Indian School has partnered with Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts to provide professional development training and workshops for its teachers.
During the first year of the partnership professors from Bridgewater sat in on classes and listened to teachers to understand what they thought additional training might help. “The big gaps that we were struggling with at the time revolved around academic writing— research writing and structured essays. What we were hearing from our students was that they were getting to college but they were not ready for that level of writing,” said Coomes. The following years focused heavily on developing an extensive research project for students that incorporated new tools, skills and techniques learned from the Bridgewater staff in partnerhship with The DBQ Project.
Sixth year teacher Anne Grass finds the support from Bridgewater incredibly beneficial. “As a teacher you have the benefit and the access of master teachers [through Bridgewater]; people who have been at the profession for a very long time.” Grass is a former Red Cloud volunteer and has returned from her hometown of St. Louis to teach English in the high school. She notes the unique challenges faced teaching within a changing system and a remote environment. “Things are constantly changing with Common Core education. It’s a lot of work to stay current. When you live in an isolated rural place, it’s easy to be behind the times.”
During the workshops teachers spend focused time discussing writing and how they can further integrate it in the classroom in ways that will appeal to every learner. “Some of the discussions we had around writing included ‘what are creative yet quick ways to have writing assignments?’, and ‘how can you have students write every single day and not have that be overwhelming to students?’”
The engagement across curricula has been immediate. Fourth grade teacher Claire Dille notes that it’s additional work but it’s easy when the outcomes are so important. “These two students were doing a project on time and money, it was a story problem, and they were super discussing it like, ‘No that can’t work because of this…” Claire, who has been teaching at Red Cloud since 2011, said it was a magical moment because everything that they negated they had reason for. “That’s where you want them to be when they are doing math. You want them to explain why something doesn’t work.”
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Photos © 2015 Red Cloud Indian School, Inc.