Professional Development Workshop
This spring on Professional Development Day, May 10, 2000, the kindergarten team from the Tobin School, including Joanne Cleary, Betsy Damian, Beth Hurley, Nancy Lange, and Marietta Sbraccia, made a presentation on their year long collaborative project called "Beautiful Stuff". The goal of this workshop was to share ideas and experiences about working across classrooms on a joint curriculum and to show the history of our year, our thoughts, our questions and our successes. We wanted to actively engage the participants in an experience which paralleled that of the children.
Marietta Sbraccia introduced the workshop. Then Nancy Lange presented the history behind the project stressing theory and philosophy.
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Participants explored and sorted materials that we
had brought from the Kindergarten Art Studio.
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We shared our year long slide documentation touching on developmental milestones, curriculum connections, and the benefits for social-emotional growth.
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| Participants included administrators, pre-school teachers, and teaching assistants as well as primary teachers from across the city.
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After exploring and sorting the materials this teaching team
collaborated on a representational art piece.
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Participants were asked to make a sketch of their completed art work.
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These four pictures show our Principal, Mr. Watson,
who
enjoyed sorting, creating, displaying, and titling his work.
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Laura Groff, one of Tobin's primary teachers, works on her self portrait, creating, drawing and displaying it. The teacher participants in this workshop followed the same process the kindergarten children did. Pride was equally evident.
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Here are the various finished pieces as they were displayed at the workshop.
In school we have a similar display which we call the "Kindergarten Museum". |
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The final part of the workshop was a visit to the Teachers'
Resource Center
where everyone had an opportunity to visit the
Kindergarten Cluster's
"Beautiful Stuff" web pages. |
Return to Kindergarten Cluster
Return to Beautiful Stuff
Return to Tobin Home Page
Created by Joanne Cleary
June 9, 2000