Quality British Education in Saudi Arabia
Professional Development at DBGS
Continuing Professional Development at DBGS in Term 1
This term began with five staff work days. These gave new teachers chance to settle in, classrooms were set up and there was time for staff to meet together with the Senior Management Team. These days also provided the opportunity for some in-house staff development sessions. We learnt more about assessment, using power points (as a consequence many teachers used power points when they talked to parents at the Back to School sessions) and there was some training for the key stage three and four teachers on how to use a virtual school site called Blackboard. At the time we didn’t appreciate how valuable this particular training would be!
As term got underway we began to receive information about courses and conferences in the Gulf and further afield. Several teachers have already been to Bahrain, Dubai or Germany and they will feed back to colleagues in the new year.
The weeks of virtual school accelerated our mastery of Blackboard and was a time of learning new skills not only from ISG ‘experts’ but from supportive staff within our own school who generously shared their knowledge.
The teaching assistants have received some specific in-house training and, as always, have been encouraged to attend as many other sessions as possible.
Following our accreditation visit, CIS recognised a need to train teachers local to the Middle East in the roles of visiting team members. Several of our teachers attended one day courses in Al Khobar and Oman.
A small group embarked on the second year of a two year Masters course and we have both invited and been invited to appropriate sessions cross-campus.
It has been a very busy time and the following term looks set to be equally so in terms of continuing professional development at DBGS.
Rosalind Power
Staff Development Coordinator
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