Describe your school district.

Include relevant information about the ethnic, social, economic,

cultural, and geographic factors affecting the district environment. Share at least a couple of

sentences identifying your district's perspective of Continuous Professional Development.

I work for the Granite School District. This district is located in the Salt Lake

City, Utah area and operates 90 schools. It is made up of more than 64,000

students, and more than 9,500 employees. It encompasses 257 square miles of

land and a widely diverse population of students in its community. Approximately

35,000 students, or 54%, live at or below the poverty line. 70% of the refugees in

the state of Utah live within our district boundaries. We also have 106 different

languages and dialects spoken with our students district wide. With this

demographic information, it is clear why the Granite School District places such

an emphasis on Continuous Professional Development with courses and training

that focus on high impact instructional strategies to tarken children in poverty. We

have bi-weekly time set aside for professional development as well as full days

for learning and collaboration on critical topics each quarter.

Describe your school. Include relevant information about the ethnic, social, economic, cultural,

and geographic factors affecting the school environment that are different from those described

in your response to Guiding Prompt A. Share at least a couple of sentences identifying your

school's perspective of Continuous Professional Development.

I work at Jackling Elementary School in West Valley City, Utah. Our school has

approximately 454 students and the majority of them, 46.04%, are Hispanic. The

next largest population in our student community is students who are White and
 they make up 34.58% of our students. Additionally we have Pacific Islander

(7.93%), African American (6.61%), Asian (3.52%), and Multiple Race (1.52%)

Students in our school. 325 or 71.59% of our entire student population is

economically disadvantaged, qualifying us to be a Title I school. We sit on the

west side of the main interstate in the state, and we are a community school which

means that we do not have any busses because all houses fall within a 1.5 mile

radius of the school itself. Our school places a big emphasis on Professional

Development as we focus on the continuous aspect of it. We work together as

grade level teams to collaborate weekly and identify problems that we can seek

out information on and learn about with the help and support of our literacy and

instructional coach.

Provide an overview of your school’s faculty. Include relevant information such as the career

stages, teaching styles, and diversity of the staff, and describe leadership opportunities. Share at

least a couple of sentences identifying your teacher's perspectives of Continuous Professional

Development.

Jackling Elementary’s Faculty is made up of primarily white, female teachers. We

have 2 white male teachers. Most teachers in our building have been teaching for

at least 5 years, and we have 2 teachers who are in their second year of teaching.

More than half our staff has their ESL endorsement to meet the diverse needs of

our English Language Learners. There is at least one ESL endorsed teacher in

each grade level. We have leadership opportunities with our School

Transformation Team, Family and Community Engagement Team, Student

Support Team, PBIS Committee, and After School Programs. The teachers in our
school seem receptive to learning and growing through Continuous Professional

Development, but they often feel nervous about changing the methods or forms of

delivery from what they know and are comfortable with. Our staff as a whole is

constantly seeking out ways to engage our students in poverty though, and overall

they are enthusiastic about making a difference in that way.