Blackboard Discussion Forum: Professional Development Day Reflections
We had a great Professional Development Day on EPAS. We Presented EPAS as a part of our LINCS inservice. There was wonderful response from our faculty. They enjoyed the icebreaker. We gave them a packet with some of the information we received from the project. We presented them with Powerpoints on "What is EPAS" and PLAN data for Washington-Marion. The faculty could see and appreciate the relevance of using the EXPLORE/PLAN Test as predictors for LEAP 21/GEE 21/ACT. As you know, we lost two of our team members. But we have now gained two. Doretha and I had a great time doing this presentation.
Our morning session began with two faculty members who had attended a local school district workshop presenting a powerpoint on the Comprehensive Curriculum and the i-LEAP Assessment Guide. They treated us to a fun activity to assess what we had learned and awarded prizes.
After a short break, we were treated to a very rewarding presentation on EPAS by Kelly Papania of the Board of Regents and Faimon Roberts whom we all know. I remembered Heather telling us at our workshop in July that she would come out to our schools if needed. When I contacted her office, she was happy to send someone out for our Professional Development day. Kelly's powerpoint presentation compared Explore/PLAN/ACT scores.She also presented an overview of our school's Plan Intervention. Mr. Roberts was there the entire day and was able to answer many of our questions. He spoke about the need to assess our school's needs and GEARUP.
After lunch, Clara Bilal and Bonnie Mitchell continued with a discussion of the Comprehensive Curriculum and GLEs.
Catherine
The EPAS team felt our first meeting was a success. Everyone enjoyed hearing about ways to raise ACT scores. Our principal was extremely happy that we chose to participate in EPAS!!
Aimee Anne Norcross
Rusheon Middle School
I would just inform you some of the recent reactions of the faculty regarding the recent epas results during our informal meetings. Some teachers are still not writing the EPAS standards in their lesson plans. This may be due to the new oncourse program that the parish is implemmenting. The teachers are still getting used to the electronic filing of lesson plans and how it works. We are still vigilant in promoting the inclusion of EPAS standards into their lesson plans.
Some teachers still do not see the importance of the recent EPAS results. The EPAS team is suggesting that we include this as one of the agendas in the Febuary and March Faculty meetings.
