Faculty Professional Development: Summer School for Teachers

30 teachers. Five major summer immersion training initiatives. Their mission? To cultivate classroom innovation, find ways to help girls build grit through academic risk-taking, and expand the service learning programs that help our girls live “Actions Not Words.”

This summer, Mayfield’s teachers become the students in their mission to constantly find better ways to facilitate and inspire learning. They’ll be focused on these five tracks:

• Service Learning: We’re working to weave service learning throughout the entire curriculum—beyond theology classes and Campus Ministry—where the act of serving others becomes a powerful lesson that makes complex concepts more concrete.

• STEAM Curriculum Development: Robotics, tech theatre, coding—we’ve come a long way this year in finding new ways to integrate art and design with STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math) to help prepare students to for 21st-century careers that meld left-brain logic and right-brain creativity. There’s more to come!

• Coding Boot Camp: We’re taking our campus-wide JavaScript coding program to the next level with a new VidCode training curriculum for teachers and their students. (This year’s rollout was a huge success—next year’s first-ever AP Computer Science courses are already packed with dozens of eager coders!)

• Interdisciplinary Learning: Theology and art. Chemistry and coding. Geometry and tech theatre. Teachers in different departments will brainstorm more ways to help their students make curricular connections across subjects and become fearless in taking academic risks—we’re paving new paths for our girls to approach challenging subjects with grit and resilience.

• AP Workshops and Intensives: These “AP Summer Institutes” are intensive professional development programs specifically designed to help AP teachers boost their skills in teaching advanced, college-level concepts to high school students.