Reflections of Havergal: 1994-2019

Faculty professional development, 2008

The Girls and Learning Team is a long-standing professional learning community that serves as an adjunct to professional development and meets monthly in a cross-curricular group to engage in conversations focused on a shared text … Our aim is to focus on how girls learn and how we can implement ideas from what we read into our own teaching and inform best practices in a collegial and informal environment. We have members from almost every department, and we cross pollinate our teaching practice. The learning team’s cumulative reading list is a strong indication of the range and depth of their discussions: • Cain, Susan. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking . • Cohen-Sandler, Roni. Stressed-Out Girls: Helping Them Thrive in the Age of Pressure . • Damour, Lisa. Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood . • Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers: The Story of Success . • Erlauer, Laura. The Brain-Compatible Classroom: Using What We Know About Science to Improve Teaching . 

Professional Learning Teams

The first learning teams were introduced at Havergal in the 2001–02 school year. Learning teams offer teachers with an interest in a particular topic an opportunity to explore it in a small group. As explained in “Teaching and Learning for Understanding,” published in the Fall 2009 issue of Torch , “[r]esearch shows that when PD is conducted in teams, faculty is more effective in transferring learning in the classroom and in work with students.”  Over the years, learning teams have reflected on such thought-provoking practices as inquiry-based learning and cultures of thinking. One such team, which has been going strong since the PD model was introduced at the school, focuses its energies on emerging research on girls and learning. The following report on the Girls and learning team was delivered at the end of the 2015–16 school year, and it is easy to imagine how thought-provoking the discussions were:

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