This summer several members of the Hewitt faculty are enjoying a wide array of professional development activities. History teacher Joseph Iannacone attended a weeklong conference in charming Berkeley, California, to guide sixth through eighth grade instruction and advisories. Called Developmental Designs, it draws from leading thinkers, such as Abraham Maslow and Rudolf Dreikurs, offering new approaches for building community, classroom management and instruction to strengthen teaching practice with a sound, integrated social and academic curriculum.
Librarian Danielle Blaise and Coordinator of Print and Information Services Joanne Walsh attended TEACH 21, a professional development institute targeted to teachers and librarians in Grades K – 8, taught by the faculty at The School at Columbia University. Focusing on 21st century teaching and learning, topics included uses of databases, eBooks, e-readers, Google and iPAD applications and collection development. New uses for technology in the classroom included dropbox.com, Word Clouds and using Twitter as a Professional Learning Network (PLN). Both Danielle and Joanne are excited to begin applying what they learned in the Library in September.