Paddington Professional Development Day: A Focus on our Communications

On Tuesday October 8th, the faculty and staff gathered at Paddington for a day of professional development. We kicked off the day by sharing feedback, ideas, and successes related to the classroom blogs. Teachers have embraced this new method of sharing information with families about classroom events, sign-ups, wish lists and curriculum. In addition, families can find photographs and anecdotes describing what and how children are learning each day through a variety of engaging play-based experiences. We all agree the blogs are a wonderful way to communicate with families and to provide an answer to the question, “what did you do at school today?” Our hope is that families will read the blogs, perhaps even with your child, and use this as an opportunity to ask deeper questions and to find out more from your child about what is happening in the classroom on a daily basis and to discover what activities they most enjoy at school, what books they enjoyed reading as a class, and more! Library and science blogs are coming soon, so be on the lookout for these in the coming weeks.

Later in the morning, teachers participated in both an online and a remote training on another piece of technology, Kaymbu, which is our new family engagement and documentation tool. The Squirrel Nutkin classroom piloted this tool last year and it received positive reviews from teachers and parents! Kaymbu will provide a platform for teachers to document individual student growth and development throughout the school year as well as allow them to share their observations with parents. Shortly you will begin receiving digests from your child’s teachers containing photographs and anecdotes of your child that have been captured during the school day. This will provide you with yet another opportunity to discover more about how your child enjoys their time at Paddington. You will also learn more about the individual growth and development milestones and skills that your child is practicing and achieving through play. Kaymbu contains a messaging system, so you may receive important classroom announcements, updates, and reminders via Kaymbu. You will be learning more about this new tool from your child’s classroom teachers as we continue to integrate this new piece of technology into our daily routines. If you have any questions about Kaymbu, please feel free to reach out to me anytime!

 We wrapped up our professional development day with an update from Ashley and Megan, our outdoor classroom ambassadors, a group clean-up of the toddler and preschool outdoor spaces and time in classrooms for curriculum planning and preparing for the week ahead. It was an action-packed day, and we all enjoyed the time together as a staff to continue our own journeys as joyful life-long learners!