Sunday, October 12, 2008

Trombone Player Wanted - Authentic

http://www.marcusbuckingham.com/home.phpw.marcusbuckingham.com/home.php
Developing curriculum for teaching professionals can be a challenge. The senior faculty organized and created a faculty development committee. They volunteered to take over what is called Admin Week. With direction from the Dean of Education, the committee was charged with implementing a new technological leap for the school. This is tracked and part of the requirements for employment at the school. This workshop was to give 12 hours of specific training to migrate the faculty to this new product. The faculty development committee built the two-day workshop around the teachings of Marcus Buckingham. A provocative title was chosen for the conference: “Playing to Your Strengths as an Educator”. The faculty wanted to extend the workshop to allow more conversation and interaction. This was certainly a change for some previous Admin Weeks that people could not wait to end – or tried to slip out early. Engaging people whose job it is to engage people is a special challenge. By offering a variety of experiences, lots of interacting and teambuilding and an involving use of technology, the conference seemed to be a success.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

heyheydaddio,

Interesting post but it's hard to tell what kind of school you work in. TPW is a great resource. We use it for professional development at our school too and even use it with parents when we take kids in. If you are looking for another great resource on strengths development in schools, check out Your Child's Strengths by Jenifer Fox, MEd. She write about how to create a whole school culture of strengths as well as how to bring the strengths revolution into the classroom and home with young people. Buckingham wrote the forward. Great book and very readable.