The staff development committee has worked this year to try and better meet the needs of our staff and to help continue our efforts to improve the student achievement levels of our students. There have been some minor revisions to the PIRnet to help make it more useful. I encourage all of you to take a look at what is available to satisfy your 12 hour flexible PIR requirement by logging on to the PIRnet.
Once you log on please check your profile to make sure that your personal information is accurate. Every staff member should have an account on the PIRnet. If you do not, simply click on the register button and it will take you through the process to get registered. If you have forgotten your user name and/or password please let me or Cissy know. Do not reregister! If you do, a separate account will then be set up and this makes it very difficult to manage your account.
To view PIR options available to you click on the Select Sessions button in the upper left hand corner of the page. You will find many options listed. Each of these are available to you to satisfy your flexible PIR requirement.
Of particular interest to you might be the sessions: "Generational Poverty and Academic Achievement for the K-5 teacher" and "Generational Poverty and Academic Achievement for the 6-12 teacher" being held on August 17 and 18 respectively. These are a follow up to the Generational Poverty inservice provided by Lisa Fuller a couple years ago. Lisa is coming back to offer these sessions to our staff. They are numbers 3147 and 3149 under the Instructional Improvement strand.
We have also created three Professional Practice Enhancement Team (PPET) courses that are built around the expectations found in our Evaluation Tool. There have been three separate sessions designed around Domains 1, 2 and 3 in the teacher evaluation tool. These sessions are entitled: "Professional Practice Enhancement Team - Course 1: Planning and Preparing for Student Learning", "Professional Practice Enhancement Team - Course 2: Creating an Environment for Student Learning" and "Professional Practice Enhancement Team - Course 3: Teaching for Student Learning". They are numbers 3144, 3145 and 3146 and are found under the Instructional Improvement strand. Each of these courses will also be available for college credit through FVCC and are eligible for movement on the salary schedule in addition to satisfying your flexible PIR requirement. These courses are not sequential and can be taken in any order. Please refer to the PIRnet for further details.
Many other options are available to you through our district, other districts and the Curriculum Cooperative. Please check back often over the summer as new options will be made available.
I trust that the options you see will meet your needs. If they do not you always have the option of creating one of our Professional Learning Community (PLC) opportunities. These PLCs include: Study Groups (#2449), Collaborative Planning (#2447), Peer Coaching (#2448) and Action Research (#2446) Click on the link to find the description and requirements for each of these PLC options.
To help alleviate questions and confusion regarding PIR accountability, PIR procedures and acceptable PIR Options I have attached a sheet outlining our district’s Flexible PIR guidelines. Please take a look at this to assure that your professional development activities meet the requirements of the district. If you have any questions, let me know.