Professional Development

In addition to following my mentor teacher to professional development sessions within the school, I also spent a Saturday at RIASCD's annual conference for pre-service teachers. It was an inspirational and pedagogically valuable conference, where the breakout sessions provided me with new tools for engaging multiple intelligences and working effectively with behaviorally troubled students. One session introduced the idea of drawing as a diagnostic or elaboration activity, which I immediately implemented in my classes the following week and found to be very useful, particularly for highlighting misconceptions. Another session explained the "Nurtured Heart Approach," a refreshingly positive strategy for transforming difficult individuals, particularly those with behavior issues or attention deficit disorder. In my observations of teachers with special-ed students, I have seen similar strategies work with surprising results.