The toughest PD you’ll ever love

Dear Colleagues –

Yesterday we had wonderful day on campus with students, teachers, and parents as they worked through Chapters 1-3 of our developing WASC Self-Study. My thanks to David Ross, Jacob Humes, Tina Ratliff, Tara Ronzetti, Abena Bailey, Rick Freil, Siqin Taoli, Mark Mouck, Thomas Galvez and Sonia Ortiz who took time away from their classes to participate in these discussions. A further “thank you” to each of you who opened your classroom to our visitors and showed them the dynamic life of the school that our students experience every day. I heard so many good comments from parents who suddenly had a window into a part of their child’s life that they rarely get to see.

Thanks, too, to Tina Fossgreen and Molly Burger for organizing the day and to Bill Fossgreen and Elaine Eastwood who ran a CFG protocol to help parents digest some rather complex material.

While WASC reaccreditation is a time consuming task, I’m writing to gauge interest amongst the faculty in serving on WASC visiting teams.

Each year I receive a request from WASC to update names of individuals with the SSIS faculty and administration who are willing and able to serve.

Make no mistake about it—these are demanding events. You start by reading, in its entirety, a school’s self-study. You then join a visiting team and spend between 4-5 days at a school interviewing students, teacher, administrators, and parents, all the while writing an evaluation report which contains recommendations for school improvement. There are long days spent at the school and long nights writing back in your hotel room. You will leave exhausted.

And yet, if your experience is anything like mine, you will leave feeling you have participated in the best PD of your life. You have, in a rather detached fashion that you cannot replicate at your own school, thoroughly dissect a school. You’ve seen thing worthy of emulation that you might never have considered before, and perhaps witnessed train wrecks you’ll work to avoid in the future. You will grow in your appreciation for just how complex a system a school is and you will have even more respect for dedicated students, teachers, administrators and parents who work every day towards a common end.

Aside from heads of school, division heads, curriculum directors, and other administrative specialists, WASC populates these teams with department heads, subject specialists, team leaders, and instructional leaders and coaches. If this interests you, please send me an email.

Sincerely yours,
Mark Sylte, Head of School