Parent Detention days???

Parent Detention Days?
My kids came home from school one day in October, proudly declaring that the next two days were “PD Days”, which they said stands for “parent detention days”.  I was amused... and a little sad.  So, I thought it would be good to share with you what we do on these days and why it’s worth giving the parents a detention for the day (haha)! 
Our professional development has focussed on:

1. Assessment, evaluation, and reporting.  The Ministry inspector will be paying attention to how well we do this. 
2. Reformed teaching.  We are digging deep into the question of what it means to teach Christianly, or in a specifically Reformed manner.  We’re considering Reformed content and Reformed pedagogy (teaching methods) based on a biblical understanding of who the child is. 
3. School culture and pedagogy. We have been reading the book Humanizing the Education Machine by Rex Miller, Bill Latham, and Brian Cahill.  The book has been giving us lots to digest in regard to school culture and teaching methods.

Our recent PD days have looked like this:
Last week Thursday, our staff discussed at length a portion of Humanizing the Education Machine.  Our conversation on that day was about what it means to communicate and promote a greater culture of care at the school.  We care, and we are looking for ways to show it.  We look forward to engaging parents on this topic in the future too. 
We also reviewed our latest Bridge Day to see what went well and how we could be doing this better. 
On Friday, we attended the teacher’s convention hosted by the League of Canadian Reformed School Societies.  Our staff heard a keynote speech from Dr. David Zietsma from Redeemer University on the importance and value of Christian education at the elementary, secondary, and post-secondary levels (by the way, grade 12 students, have you considered Christian universities like Redeemer or Dordt?  I believe these schools have a lot more to offer than we sometimes give them credit for…).  Teachers also attended a variety of workshops that were more specific to their areas of expertise.  Convention days are very helpful, and we come back to school the next week chatting about various ideas for our classrooms and our hallways. 
One exciting PD day coming up will take place on November 22.  I have been working with the principals from our sister schools in Fergus, Hamilton, and St. George to plan our very first collaboration day.  We hope and intend that this will become an annual event.  Each school will be hosting different departments (Providence will be hosting math, science, and learning assistance teachers). We plan to spend the morning in discussion on what it means to “teach Reformed”.  In the afternoon, we will brainstorm how we can collaborate better together, either by sharing lesson and unit plans, sharing assessment strategies, etc.  We think that we can be better together; we just need time and space. 
Our teachers are peculiar professionals.  We get excited about this kind of stuff.  We think it has a big impact on what goes on at Providence, and we look forward to ongoing professional growth to help us serve our community better.  
MVD