Transcript

I'm the principal of General Studies at our school, and I'm here to give you a look into what we do at the school. Our school is a Jewish Orthodox Elementary School, from pre-school starting at the age of three, to graduating at the age of 13-14. We have students here that are very diverse, coming from all types of backgrounds. Our challenge at the school is not only the fact that we try to cover all ministry guidelines, but the fact that being an Orthodox school, we have, maybe, half the time to do everything that the curriculum offers, which is a huge challenge for all of us. The students here come from all different backgrounds and therefore English is not our first language, it could be number three or four.

At our school, we want to promote a positive climate. We want learning to happen at all levels. In order to have that happen, we must make sure that the teachers buy into all of our new initiatives. Professional development is key to any of the initiatives that you're going to put through to all of the students, and the teachers are key to make sure it's implemented. In order to do that, we bring in the very best professionals that we can find in order to advise our staff and give them the strategies necessary to promote our initiatives. In order to implement all of our new initiatives, we took on the course of action that we would take it slow and easy in order to make sure that the teachers understood each part as we went along. By bringing in the different consultants, we made sure that the teachers had the opportunity to use the strategies that were given to them. Taking on the initiative of technology was a very daunting task for us. 

As we are Orthodox, we had to be very careful that we followed all the laws in order to be able to use all the equipment we wanted to, effectively. We had to make sure that both the Hebrew and the General Studies teachers were on in order to be able to use all of the mobile devices offered. It was a huge challenge for us, and we took it slow and easy. We made sure that we only offered the technology to those teachers that were willing to train and take their time to make sure that they really understood what had to be done. Using a user-friendly environment recreated a mentor program where our teachers would actually be teaching other teachers how to use the equipment. That was the most effective way to initiate change. 

One pivotal aspect of all of this was to make sure that the teachers were asked the question: how do you know they know? And this is where CFU, Checking For Understanding, came in. How do you check to make sure that the child understands the lesson being taught? And what we did is we follow a simple process that goes back to Pioneer times. We brought out the slate board, and this way, the teacher could always check if the child actually knew the answer to the math question, if they actually knew how to spell a certain word, and therefore assessment did not have to be long tests. They could be immediate.  Also part of the process was AP, Active Participation. It was very important that it included all students in the process of learning.