Buffalo Public Schools begin a brand new school year Tuesday. WBFO's senior reporter Eileen Buckley recently visited West Hertel Academy to learn how leadership and teacher spent the summer preparing for the new school year.
"We've been training teachers on best practices and strategies for ELA and Math,” said Cecelie Owens, Principal, West Hertel Academy.
Owens tells WBFO News many of her teachers attended a round of professional development this summer. It was supplied by a company called West Ed. She was very excited because so many attended and participated in enhancing their own learning to bring back to the classroom.
“I was walking down the hall earlier and one of the teachers saw me and said ‘we did something great when you stepped out’ – so I said I’ll go back in there and listen to it. They’re very excited about what they learned over the last month,” Owens described.
Aakta Patel is one of West Hertel's Assistant Principals.
“They’re talking to each other and they’re listening to each other,” said Patel.
Patel tells us teachers worked closely during the professional development sessions, digging into the many aspects of their work, something they don't have time to do during the school year
“And they are coming up with innovative ideas that sometimes, don’t always happen when they don’t get a chance or the opportunity to sit and have these deep conversations about instruction, which is the only thing that will change student achievement,” Patel explained.
“The culture of the building is huge. We work so hard to create an environment and a forum for the teachers to take a risk,” Owens said.
Parent engagement will also be blended in more closely to a student's academics. The school will also being working on West Ed to learn how to create ‘academic parent-teacher’ teams.
“What that’s going to do is bring families in in large numbers three times a year. It’s kind of a little different than a parent-teacher conference because you are really going to be sitting with the teacher, the student and looking at their work and having these robust conversations about the data and what the families could do at home with their child based on what the teacher is sharing with them,” Owens responded.
Nearly 900-students attend West Hertel Academy with a diverse population of students from many different countries. The top languages are Nepali, Somalia, Burmese and Arabic. But at every grade level there is an 'English is a New Language Teacher' to support those students and their American learning.
