Dear Red Pine Families,

I’m often asked what exactly the Red Pine staff does on our professional development days in which students are not in school. The easy answer is that we work very hard, but I thought I’d go into a little more depth into what was accomplished this past week.

We began our day with technology training in particular ways to improve professionally. So much of the information management part of our jobs has gone online and unlike most corporations, we do not get time or financial resources to train staff in these new areas of technology. Thus, it was important to take a short time to gain as much knowledge in the area of technology as possible.

We then took some time reviewing and clarifying our building emergency plan. We have very specific procedures for all staff to follow dependent upon what emergencies may come up at our school. We are one of very few schools that have actually practiced a parent reunification drill, but feel that our proximity to some significant industries makes this an important thing to do. You may have heard that there was a bank robbery in Rosemount recently and at that time we went into a high security mode as soon as we were notified. You never know what may happen so we need to always be prepared to keep our students safe.

The majority of our day was spent working on developing learning targets in the area of mathematics for each grade level. Every team met to determine “essential learnings” or what exactly it is that students need to know to be successful in math at their particular grade level. As Mal Pancoast stated, “The odds of hitting your target go up dramatically when you aim at it”. We want to post learning targets for our students so they know exactly what it is we expect them to learn. You may see some of these targets posted around the school in the near future.

Other parts of the day were used for such things as specialists, special education staff and specialized staff meeting with other teachers in their area of teaching focus. Classroom teachers also spent time preparing for conferences, putting additional data into online data management systems and other important tasks. We can always use more time and professional development days, but are thankful for every minute we get to serve our students and families.

Sincerely, Gary Anger