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SLS Fellows Program Director Abby Abbott Hosts NYSAIS Workshop
On Thursday, Jan. 5, Abby Abbott, St. Luke’s Upper School History Teacher and Fellows & Early Career Educators Program Director, hosted a workshop entitled Launching a Teaching Fellows Program, in partnership with the New York State Association of Independent Schools (NYSAIS). Faculty Excellence, including spreading the knowledge of St. Luke’s teachers, is a central pillar of St. Luke’s Strategic Plan: Prepared to Thrive.
Abbott shares more about this exciting experience below.
Recently, there’s been an uptick of schools, near and far, reaching out to St. Luke’s to ask about our highly regarded Teaching Fellows Program. Schools across the country are looking for ways to attract promising college graduates to their campuses. Increasingly, they are attempting to launch their own in-house programs to attract, grow, and retain quality educators. Knowing there would be local interest in the topic, I submitted a proposal to NYSAIS to host a workshop on how to craft and launch an in-house fellows program.
The virtual workshop brought together more than 30 New York school administrators, who were eager to learn how to structure programs to train promising new educators and ensure they provide an excellent student experience. During the 40-minute workshop, I discussed what I look for when recruiting early-career teachers. My ideal candidate is a person who genuinely wants to connect with students and has demonstrated content-area expertise. I also shared the three-pronged approach St. Luke’s created to provide new educators with essential support. For our fellows, that includes one-on-one meetings with me or the department chair, cohort meetings that bring together all the fellows, and weekly classroom observations. This approach helps fellows create lesson plans, design assessments, provide student feedback, and ensure an equitable, engaging, inspiring classroom environment. Lastly, I spoke about our intensive summer professional development program, The August Institute — a five-day intensive workshop designed to provide new teachers with immediately transferable tools, strategies, and activities necessary to run an effective and inclusive classroom.
Being able to share St. Luke’s Teaching Fellows Program with other independent schools was very important to me, especially since it makes our thinking visible to others and brings to life St. Luke’s commitment to being an educator of educators.
St. Luke’s School is a secular (non-religious), private school in New Canaan, CT for grades 5 through 12 serving over 40 towns in Connecticut and New York. Our exceptional academics and diverse co-educational community foster students’ intellectual and ethical development and prepare them for top colleges. St. Luke’s Leading with Humanity curriculum builds the commitment to serve and the confidence to lead.
