With all the students sitting attentively, waiting for her to begin, Davis-Nealy took her time and surveyed her classroom. The students’ desks were set up in neat, ordered rows, but Davis-Nealy told her students that the class setup was a problem.
“I need you all to be able to work collaboratively,” she said. “Let’s see if we can rearrange this room into groups to look like a fifth-grade classroom — You have 30 seconds.”
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“We’re trying to get the teachers to go through the same processes that the students will go through,” Davis-Nealy said. “They learn to think about what they do naturally as a reader, and teach the students that.”
Davis-Nealy told her class this was a critical step to becoming better reading and writing teachers, which was the goal of CUSD’s fourth annual Summer Reading Workshop Institute.
Drawing educational talent from the Teachers College at Columbia University, the workshop attracted more than 150 teachers to Half Moon Bay this week to foster better language skills among young students.
“The best educators are in a continuous cycle of improvement,” said Melinda Fore, former principal at El Granada Elementary School and now an educational coordinator for San Mateo County. “This is intellectualizing the profession.”
Fore is credited with helping to begin the reading and writing workshop. She says she was inspired by a similar successful program in San Ramon that also used consultants from Columbia University. After starting in 2004, the workshop has become popular among schools, drawing more teachers to Half Moon Bay than the event organizers can accept.
Elizabeth Schuck, assistant superintendent at CUSD, says the skills taught at the workshop help teachers improve language skills for all students, including those learning English as a second language.
“It helps every student in the class,” Schuck said. “For us in Cabrillo in the last years, we’ve seen higher reading scores, and we attribute that to the professional development teachers have been pursuing to hone their craft.”
Her third year coming to Half Moon Bay for the workshop, Davis-Nealy says the summer week of pedagogical study often results in dramatic changes for every teacher’s personal method for educating their students.
“I see people who I taught before and they’re recommending my group,” she says. “So that’s a good testament to how powerful they think it is.”
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