Teachers As Learners

Curriculum, Instruction and Learning

Research into the key effective practices that are shown time and again to be present in successful schools shows professional development as vital to that success.

In our efforts to improve, our primary goal is to provide opportunities for our teachers and staff to learn and to work together. Quite honestly, we think the very best teachers and administrators never stop learning. They're usually passionate about new ideas, not just in their subject, but in outside interests as well. This means an open and insightful willingness to consider new ideas. It also means that we have to help provide learning opportunities for our teachers.

The problem at Gowanda has been that we’ve not ever supported teachers enough in their own learning and planning of our instructional programs. One major reason has been a lack of money. The Campaign for Fiscal Equity, as launched and won down-state, also significantly benefits Gowanda in 13-14% increases to foundation aid for the last two years. GCS Superintendent Charles J. Rinaldi and our Board of Education are devoted to using those increases to aid to further develop our instructional programs. In order to provide teachers with rich learning opportunities and time to collaborate, we have to have the money to pay them.

Our initiatives are detailed on other pages within this website. You can read about our new reading program, our school improvement plan, our intentional curriculum design, and other opportunities. Our teachers are no longer asked to figure out their curriculum and instruction on their own, in isolation. Instead, we are working together to make sure that a student’s path through our system is intentionally and collaboratively designed to provide the best possible learning opportunities for our students, all of them.

Gowanda is such an incredible community and school district, with wonderful families, students, teachers, administrators and support staff. We know our dedication to school improvement will reap positive results for us because we believe in our collective power to make it happen.

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