Summer Institute – MALI

Successful plus

Last week MALI had its summer institute at USM in Portland where 60 educators participated in professional development. On the first day 13 Teaching Artists had the chance to learn about standards, technology tools, and creativity in action. The feedback  pointed to a success for all involved.

Twelve new Teacher Leaders were selected for Phase 5 and during the three days they had many chances to expand their thinking in Assessment, Proficiency and Standards, Advocacy, Leadership, and Technology. They created an Action Plan that guided them to design a workshop that they will present during the 2015-16 school year.

Returning Teacher Leaders learned about the Logic Model and how to create a plan that will lead them to action. They had workshops on Messaging, Social Media, Cross Disciplinary Teaching, and Leadership. They collaborated to create drafts of MALI belief statements on several topics that are key to MALI.

The opportunity to network and interact with each other was definitely a highlight for all attendees. The Leadership Team and some Teacher Leaders took on leadership roles to facilitate sessions. They were amazing!

On the third day each teacher shared their action plans and logic model plans using the critical friend model and ended with a gallery walk that was amazing! The teachers were pleased to have so many comments to help them with their next step. It was so impressive to see what they accomplished in a short period of time.

Teacher Leaders will be sharing their work in a more final stage on August 20 with critical friends. If you’d like to participate in the Critical Friends day please let me know ASAP by emailing me at argy.nestor@maine.gov.

I will share more information on the MALI summer institute in future posts.