Cross Case Features: Context

South Lake District High School: Admin Support Context

Kim Lipton takes a hands-on approach to her job as the Social Studies Curriculum Supervisorfor the South Lake School District. Far from being an ivory tower administrator, she knows teachers by name and their classroom activities first hand. One of the first things Kim did when she took her job was to institute “share days,” giving teachers a chance to meet with each other to share resources and new ideas. In her frequent forays into the schools, Kim looks for potential teacher leaders, and provides mentoring by university professors and stipends to those who provide instructional leadership for fellow teachers.

Although Kim Lipton has not attended a NCTA seminar, she is highly knowledgeable about how the NCTA participants in her district have used the content and resources from the seminars. The NCTA seminar she is planning with NCTA seminar leader Anthony Benton is the third to be offered in the district. With every additional seminar offered, Kim has tried to be strategic about participant recruitment to ensure that more than one teacher from a school receives training. In part, these efforts are driven by a desire to build a critical mass of NCTA teachers at each school. The strategy also helps promote the sharing and collaboration that is so highly valued by the district.

In planning the next seminar, she and Anthony Benton, the seminar leader, considered ways to target the specific needs of middle school teachers, focusing on key concepts that are “universal” to student learning in areas related to Social Studies, Geography, History, and Literature. Using Asia as the focus, Kim and Anthony have invited presenters from the local university to lead various sessions ¾an approach that fits with the district’s philosophy of coordinated education from preschool through undergraduate education.

While previous NCTA seminars have been conducted at the university, the “Asia Three” seminar will occur at the district’s professional development center. The facilities are large enough to accommodate new participants and NCTA alumni. Both Anthony and Kim see this strategy as another way to build depth and sharing of the Asian material across the district. Kim would also like to see participants enroll in a summer institute, working with an Asian specialist in depth and concentrating on how to reach students at different achievement levels.