District 13 teachers go back to school

While children were home on Election Day, teachers were sitting in the same seats their students normally occupy, and they were fully immersed in learning. Districts across Long Island held superintendent conference days, featuring a variety of workshops for teachers and support staff.

In District 13, the case was no different. The James A. Dever School on North Corona Avenue was the training center for teachers looking to better assist their students in learning the new Common Core Learning Standards. Administrators said that the purpose of the day was to give the teachers the tools they need to be successful in implementing the new curriculum, which is only in its second year.

“They’ve already had a lot of exposure already to Common Core,” said Carrie Schozer, the district’s coordinator of curriculum and assessment. “We just wanted to take it one step further. Everybody needs to have that comfort level with it.”

Schozer said there was a variety of speakers talking about different topics relating to Common Core. The speakers, she said, are well trained and many have visited the district in the past.

One of the presenters was Dr. Linda Opyr, the former poet laureate of Nassau County and retired administrator from Sewanhaka. She talked to teachers about how to incorporate poetry into the curriculum.

While District 13’s teachers are highly skilled at writing, Schozer said, poetry is one of the more difficult tasks to master.

Danielle Dodge, a fourth-grade teacher at Howell Road School, added that the workshop was the highlight of the day for many teachers, including herself. She said Opyr stressed that providing children with different experiences in language will help them become better and stronger readers in the long run. Dodge said she will definitely have more poetry reading and writing exercises in her classroom because of the benefits it can have. “We’re so used to focusing on informational text and novels,” she said.

Other topics on the day included Common Core Math, Junior Great Books and Response to Intervention. Off site, art, music and phys. ed. teachers attended various conferences.

The sessions were designed to provide teachers with the training that they desired, Schozer explained. A professional development committee took input from the faculty and created a program that suited everyone’s needs.

Dr. Gayle Steele, principal of the Wheeler Avenue School, said teachers were excited for a day of learning. She said they were looking for practical strategies to implement in their classrooms that will help students improve.

“The teachers are walking away with things they can actually use,” Steele said. She added that they also learned why Common Core lessons must be taught in a particular order.

Steele noted that students have many different learning needs. Teachers were interested in finding out ways to teach lessons differently she said, because they want every child to succeed.

Superintendent Dr. Adrienne Robb-Fund noted that the conference day was a good chance for the teachers from four elementary schools to get together and share ideas. “They enjoy learning from and with each other,” she said.

Dodge said that it was great to talk with her colleagues from other grades about the math curriculum, and the different strategies used at different levels for solving problems.

Schozer said that, overall, the teachers like the Common Core lessons, even if they don’t necessarily enjoy all the testing that goes along with it.

“We like the standards themselves,” Dodge added. “The standards are very beneficial for children when implemented the correct way. The concern has been, and continues to be, the gaps that we have to fill in.”

Dodge said teachers realize this has been a concern across the state, and she and her colleagues are grateful for the learning opportunities that District 13 provides them. She added that she hopes there will be even more training on Common Core offered to the faculty in the coming months.