Secondary "Ideas, Insights, and Challenges" for 2005

The secondary Ideas, Insights and Challenges annual conference, Looking In and Looking Out: Classroom Practice and the Challenges to Improving Student Achievement, held March 18, 2005, focused on best practices for effective teaching and learning in core discipline groups. Participants viewed and collectively assessed teaching practices used in available on-line videos and discussed ways they could utilize the illustrated practices with their own students, interns and novice teachers.

Participants collaboratively developed strategies to help interns examine their own instructional practices to enhance student learning. Ms. Ester Dunnegan from the Department of Public Instruction shared an overview of the proposed High School Exit Standards for North Carolina with the entire group in the luncheon keynote address.

AAfter lunch, participants engaged in table discussions related to the impacts the new exit standards would have on their students, their schools, and their own methods of teaching. Participants shared strategies for dealing with the newly mandated Senior Project and the effects that making it mandatory will have on the community and the school. Ms. Dunnegan participated in a question-and-answer session with participants, and tables shared their ideas and concerns with the entire group.

Conference participant feedback indicated that teachers appreciated the opportunity to collect information from various schools, assess current strategies, share ideas, and learn from one another, activities that they rarely have time to do during the busy school year.