One of the initiatives started by Superintendent Norris three years ago was the NeXt Generation Teaching program.
The idea is to identify those competencies, tools and tactics essential for effective teaching of and in the next generation.
The program was piloted with a small group of high school teachers just a bit over two years ago. Among other things those of us in the pilot attended three weeks of additional summer training and logged up to 90 hours of additional training and implimentation time throughout each of the last two school years.
The idea, sort of, was that this initial group would be “NeXt Generation Certified” by the end of the training. The difficulty was that the certification process had not really been dealt with. It was a bit of a “we’ll get to that when it comes up.”
Well, it’s come up, and 40 teachers want to know the next steps.
While the program has had it’s stumbles, no part of NGT training has failed to be thought-provoking and enriching. I’m a better teacher for taking part in the program and could walk away happy at this moment. That would, of course, go against the goal of having every teacher in the county working toward NGT certification – a certification that, heretofore, does not exist.
As is the way in education and old-school corporate America, a committee has been formed. Luckily, it’s a committee of people who can work well together and can challenge resepectfully.
After our first meeting we’d actually made progress. It’s sometimes a shocking thing to see beaurocracy moving forward.
The process isn’t complete, but it’s given me cause to create my first wiki. The committee members are all aware of the document and will hopefully tweak and tune it so that we can iron out details at our next meeting. Thus far, I’m the only one to have made any changes, but I’m hoping the others will hop online in the next few days.
More later.
technorati tags:NGT, teaching, education, professionaldevelopment, wiki, Nextgen