Teacher Hiring, Assessment, and Professional Development

Definition

School leaders have a commitment to hiring, assessing, and developing staff that can carry out the civic mission of the school as well as attend to equity and teachers’ and students’ identity and lived experiences

Evidence

• Danielson Framework for Effective Teaching
• Rubrics for Evaluating New Teacher Candidates
• Teacher Recruitment Plan
• Professional Development Calendar

Examples

• Students, teachers, and parents are involved in the teacher hiring process
• Professional Learning Community topics stem from teacher interests and student feedback
• Peer observations allow for opportunities for colleagues to provide informal feedback to each other and peer evaluations can provide more formal feedback
• Student Voice is incorporated into assessment of teachers
• Partnerships with grow your own teaching programs, permanent substitutes and student apprentices build pipeline of potential educators for the school

Connections to Principles of “Lived Civics”

• Students have voice in professional development, teacher hiring and assessment
• Professional Development for teachers builds on Lived Civics principles
• Partnerships with Community Stakeholders can strengthen teacher recruitment and hiring for schools

A civic-minded school climate features a strong commitment to ongoing professional learning for staff. And at York High School, this is demonstrated in several ways. Teachers have opportunities to learn from each other, as well as from specialists in the field. A long-standing practice is the ‘grassroots, in house’ Institute Day. In this model, any teacher can propose a seminar to present; staff then sign up to learn from each other on topics such as student-led discussion, de-escalation, and formative assessment. Another opportunity for teachers to learn from each other is an ongoing, less formal practice: posting a ‘pineapple sign’ outside a classroom if a teacher is open to collegial peer observations that day. Another developing practice is the use of department meetings for small instances of professional learning.

Six late start mornings are scheduled, where all departments experience ‘mini-PDs’. In addition, each department chair has been paired with an instructional coach. Together, the chair and coach develop the PD plan based on feedback from the teachers within each department. Instructional coaches also perform a ‘coaching round’ with all first- and second-year teachers, and they are available to help teachers refine lessons, target certain skills, and develop new ideas. In a similar fashion, coaches and admin have developed mini-PDs for the entire faculty. PDs are 30-minute ‘bite-sized’ portions of pedagogical instruction and cover practices that teachers have requested. Additionally, when teachers attend an outside conference, they share what they learned with other department members at one of the late start days. Teachers also learn from each other through weekly PLCs that examine student work and discuss instructional methods. This multi-layered approach for professional development gives many opportunities for York’s teachers to continually refine their pedagogical skills.