Letter to the DCPS Educators: From Chancellor Rhee

In the letter that Chancellor Rhee addressed to the teachers last March 13, 2009, she mentioned about her contract negotiations with George Parker, WTU president and Randi Weingarten, AFT president. She said that she had high hopes that the contract would be respectful of teachers, good for children, and supportive of our reform efforts that reflects the ideas of resources, professional development, student discipline, evaluation, and compensation.

I was delighted when she mentioned about her highlights which included differentiating professional development trainings. I remembered the email that I sent to the Jefferson staff during the first advisory of the school year where I was informing them of my differentiated professional development trainings. I decided to differentiate my trainings because I noticed that our teachers had different needs in terms of trainings. I saw that some of them had expertise in some trainings that I offered and some were still learning. I had to send them a list of twenty topics that I thought I could confidently use to train them. I offered to stay after school every Thursday and Friday. I could say that differentiated professional development trainings really worked because teachers started coming to me and asked for assistance in the area that they needed.

Chancellor Rhee's idea of differentiated professional development trainings would make a difference in the way how teachers work for students' high achievement.
Let us maximize the opportunity when it comes.