Professional Development Archives - Presidio Knolls School

Learning and Growing through Volunteering

As PKS teachers, we are always seeking new ways to practice our Habits of Character (respectful, responsible, resilient, collaborative, globally minded, caring and reflective) and bring them to life for our students within and beyond our school community. My own journey took an unexpected turn this past August as a result of an amazing and transformative professional development experience, an experience I want to bring to my students in the classroom.

Elementary

Creating a Culture of Learning: Professional Development at PKS

As Chris Livaccari shared at the beginning of the school year, our key themes for the 2019-2020 school year are connectedness, continuous improvement, and sustained inquiry. Together, we are working to create a culture of learning that engages and challenges not just our students, but also our educators.

Elementary

What Authentic Learning Looks like in the Classroom

One of the greatest joys and challenges of teaching in a progressive school is the ever evolving curriculum. Although the topics for the Units of Exploration are set, the course of study each year is driven by the ideas and questions of each year’s unique group of students; based on their interests we rethink and reshape the projects to provide meaningful, authentic learning experiences.

Professional Development

Presenting and Learning at the Progressive Education Network’s Biennial Conference

A team of PKS teachers, myself included, just came back from the Progressive Education Network conference in Minneapolis. This conference was a twofold opportunity – not only did we get the chance to be “experts,” presenting our perspective on progressive immersion education to educators from around North America, but away from the comfort zone of our SF bubble, we also had the opportunity to learn as our students do – by questioning, exploring, and trying new things.

Curriculum

Thinking Outside our Classrooms: A Day of Peer Learning

One of our main goals at PKS is to foster a lifelong passion for learning and exploration, not only among our students but also among our parents, faculty, and staff. A few weeks ago, however, the pedagogical team wanted to try something innovative and engaging to provide our faculty and staff with a different type of professional development (PD) opportunity; something we call “Pinterest Live” or “Old School Pinterest.”

Preschool

Our Preschool Faculty – Leaders and Learners

One of the key things that makes PKS such a special place are our teachers. They are warm, caring, and love to learn alongside their students. PKS supports our teachers and encourages them to attend conferences and seminars that will help them grow as educators. We are also proud that, even while we maintain a growth mindset and continue learning, our teachers have tremendous expertise and are well-regarded by educators from the progressive early childhood education field.

Curriculum

Lifelong Learning

Starting in preschool, we believe one of our most important jobs as educators is to cultivate in our students a lifelong passion for learning and exploration. What better way to do this, than to lead by example.