Staff Development

Dear Members:

• This Thursday is our MEA Bowling Night from 5-7pm at Bowlero here in Manteca at Yosemite Avenue.  There are about 20 slots left if you want to play or just hang out, so get a group of staff members and come have some free fun, drink, and grub!  Click here to sign up!

 

• Before break, I posted a message about student loans and high needs schools.  Manteca has no high needs schools, however.  Stockton Unified and Lodi Unified are the only ones that have them in the county.

 

• The best staff development, in my opinion, is visiting other classrooms and picking up teaching strategies from fellow educators.  It’s all about adding more tools to one’s toolbox.  Some will work for you, and some won’t.  You use what is comfortable for you.  And quite frankly…the research out there is that devices do more harm than good, attendance matters, and socio-economic factors are far more important to a child’s learning than the latest silver bullet.

 

• And quite FRANKLY…I wanted a longer lunch for those of us traveling to another site, but that was turned down by the higher ups because we have a schedule to keep.  SD Day USED to be a day where we could all go for a long lunch with our school buddies and buddettes.  It was a district tradition.  It was a day we actually looked forward to(believe it or not)because of that long lunch.

 

• My last thoughts on SD Day is we should have had training on socio-emotional strategies.  As student suspension gets more difficult to do, the district should be teaching us how to deal with kids in our classes that bring their home issues to school.  There is a LOT of good training provided by CTA on that, but alas…I was turned down on that as well.  So…I will try schedule these workshops at the MEA office.

 

• Finally, if YOU have thoughts or reactions on SD Day, it’s important for me to hear.  I can’t be your advocate unless I know what the rank and file are feeling.  As always, anything you say to me remains confidential.  But if I see a pattern from a lot of people, then the higher ups need to hear that.  We want to help people, not make anyone feel as if their best isn’t good enough.