Teachers meet at Tech Valley High School during Questar III’s Regional Professional Development Day October 21.
On Friday, October 21, approximately 460 teachers from nine school districts gathered for a day of regional professional development. Sessions covered all content areas – from World Language to Science and everything in between.
Meetings were held at Maple Hill High School in Schodack, Rensselaer Park Elementary School in Lansingburgh and Tech Valley High School in Albany. The mission of the day was to allow teachers to share best practices, collaborate on strategies and use their collective knowledge to target specific areas of professional development for the school district.
Questar III School Improvement Specialists facilitated the Middle School and High School sessions.
Questar III Deputy Superintendent Matt Sloane said districts asked for the opportunity to come together as a region.
“In some of our smaller districts there may only be a handful of teachers in a specific content area or grade level. This collaborative effort expands the pool of knowledge and allows our districts to target professional development to these educators rather than providing a general program for all teachers. I look forward to seeing the exchange of thoughts and ideas across our districts.”
Teachers who attended the day said in a survey they found the day productive and would look forward to participating again.
“This was a fantastic day. I would definitely like to have this type of opportunity again. Within 15 minutes of the start of collaboration I had six new ideas I will absolutely use in the classroom.”
“We were allowed by the open format to share big or small ideas. Most conference days are nowhere near this valuable, this should happen annually.”
See photos from all three PD locations on our Facebook page.
