Lunch and mingle with various teachers.
With the support from USC's Francophone Resource Center and the French Cultural Services at the French Embassy, I organized a free professional development weekend for immersion teachers over Veteran's 3-day Weekend. The original focus was placed on French teachers since it was supported by the French Embassy, nevertheless, realizing the best practices and support was needed for all immersion teachers, it was opened to everyone. Among the French immersion teachers, there were also those who taught Chinese, Spanish, and Hebrew. We also had English teachers whose schools started dual-immersion programs in attendance as well.
The following subjects were covered:
- Standards-based grading
- Standards-based curriculum development
- Informal and formal assessments
- Second language acquisition processes
- Community building with stakeholders
- EdTech integration in lessons
- Special education students in dual-immersion
- and Resources provided by the French Consulate
The attendees who stayed until the very last session.
All of the information and resources for those two days can be found via this website: ImmersionWeekendUSC. The two days were long (9:30am-4:45pm) and information dense, however, everyone was able to walk away with new ideas and skills to implement in their classrooms the following week. I am forever grateful for my colleagues who came and presented their expertise. With the survey results, we'll be tackling even more issues that rise in dual-immersion that we did not get to cover or go into detail. With the positive result of these two days, I'm almost certain there will be another one in the Spring. I'll keep y'all posted.