Links to state standards, the city’s scope and sequence, professional development opportunities help with DOE email, and HR information all in one place, plus news and a calendar: the city’s new Teacher Page looks like a useful resource for teachers. You can use it to subscribe to newsletters from the DOE, although it looks like everyone in the system will be automatically subscribed to the Teachers’ Weekly through their department email.
The teaching resources section, divided by subject area, could use a little work; at the moment, it’s just long lists of links, without much indication of what you might find there or how it might fit in to the city’s programs. Special education includes no links to anything about Collaborative Team Teaching (CTT), Gifted and Talented doesn’t include anything about the Schoolwide Enrichment Model, and in Science, the FOSS, Harcourt, and Glencoe sites, which relate directly to the city’s curriculum, are mixed in with resources like Bill Nye the Science Guy.
Increased communication of this kind will help teachers solve HR problems and connect to resources for themselves and their students, but it’s just a small step. Teachers still have major concerns about being treated professionally by administrators, about the fairness, frequency, and use of assessments, about whether students are getting even the legal minimum in services, about the quality of professional development, about working in clean, comfortable, safe schools, and much more. They will be looking to the DOE to address these issues in a meaningful way as the school year begins.
While we’re looking around the DOE’s website, a quick visit to their Q&A page, launched last week, shows a few of the questions parents have asked about the High School Application process, with answers posted.