The new school year is right around the corner, and teachers across the Public Schools of Robeson County are going back to the classroom armed with new skills for teaching. Over the past week, teachers from across the district participated in professional development on the new state standards for mathematics and English language arts.
During the upcoming year, teachers will move away from Common Core to the new NC Standard Course of Study. In 2017, the North Carolina Board of Education voted to change the state standards. As our teachers worked through and familiarized themselves with the new changes, numerous teachers, such as Lumberton High School’s Sherri Byrd Newberry and Susan Waldie, were in the training sessions to offer support and guidance.
Newberry has worked in education for 18 years and is very familiar with Common Core and previous standards.
“They have taken their standards and incorporated what was good about Common Core,” she said.
Breakout sessions were held, and teachers were able to use the resources, see what the instructional tools looked like firsthand and ask questions.
“We will continue training throughout the year to help teachers get prepared,” Newberry said.
Kindergarten through eighth-grade math teachers also learned the new standards.
This past, PSRC curriculum supervisors trained Newberry, Waldie and 18 other veteran teachers on the new standards.
Waldie is one of our newer teachers in the district. She is beginning her third year of teaching English II at South Robeson High School. She started her teaching career while Common Core was in place. Her teachers Ed. Program also focused on Common Core, but she is excited about all the new resources for teachers. One of the tools Susan is most excited about is the use of the LiveBinder with the new resources.
“I think the resources being in one spot is going to be the biggest advantage because when a teacher looks online or you look through text books or through different things you want to use, there is just so much and you get overwhelmed,” Waldie said. “But with this LiveBinder it is really like a binder with tabs. You have tabs on the side and all the resources are there and it is much more centralized with practical applications to my classroom.”
The English language arts teachers will have a year to work with the new standards before changes in end-of-grade and end-of-course tests will be seen. However, all math tests will be new this year based on the new standards.
