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THE PRINCIPALS' TRAINING CENTER
+ 2019
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Editor Meadow Dibble talks with Lydia Okutoro-Sack, who has just wrapped up her third year in Chennai, India teaching English to Grade 6 students. Lydia's previous position was in Kuwait, where she also taught middle school English for three years. ..more |
+ 2018
By Sue Easton
02-May-18
02-May-18
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Just about every day on my Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn feed, I find an article about the importance of Social and Emotional (SEL) teaching and learning in our K–12 schools. The research seems conclusive: SEL teaching and learning is not an add-on, but a vital component of a balanced K–12 curriculum to ensure student achievement and, ultimately, the development of healthy, successful citizens. ..more |
By Bambi Betts
04-Apr-18
04-Apr-18
| Thirty years ago, the vision was simple and compelling: create practical training opportunities for practicing and aspiring principals in international schools. The PTC has stayed true to that vision over the course of three decades. ..more |
+ 2017
By Janine Stegall
19-Oct-17
19-Oct-17
| A servant leader is a servant first. She enriches the lives of other individuals. She builds better organizations. A servant leader creates a more caring environment. The PTC has offered a great opportunity to develop the servant leadership attributes that I strive to embody. ..more |
By Gary Worth
12-Oct-17
12-Oct-17
| The Principals’ Training Center (PTC) is going back to its roots. The 2018 PTC Summer Institutes will be held in the very city where the organization held its inaugural event 30 years ago. ..more |
By Gini Rojas
04-Oct-17
04-Oct-17
| The time has come for international schools to distinguish between ‘inclusion’ vs. ‘immersion’ for English learners. Rather than pull out English learners for compensatory services, classroom teachers need to be positioned as teacher leaders to ensure that all classrooms are responsive learning environments for English learners. ..more |
By Frédéric Bordaguibel-Labayle
09-Aug-17
09-Aug-17
| At the end of the 2014-2015 school year, a small group of high school students expressed the desire to create a safe space for those who identified as members of the LGBTQ+ community and others with an interest in the topic. We didn't anticipate the controversy that this initiative would provoke. ..more |
By Sue Easton
08-Jun-17
08-Jun-17
| Department heads, grade-level leaders, instructional coaches, curriculum leaders, and others come to our Teacher Leader institutes asking: How do I run an effective meeting? How do I deal with teachers who don’t want to change? How do I support teachers in developing curriculum, assessment, instruction, etc. when I am not totally sure myself? ..more |
By Bambi Betts
24-May-17
24-May-17
| As with all professionals, teachers and principals must continue to grow and learn. PTC and TTC, sister organizations of TIE, provide an array of professional development services to international schools, including workshops and other consulting services requested by individual schools. What are the top five professional growth areas requested by schools? We have tracked this over a decade; here is what we found for the past two years: ..more |
By Bambi Betts
05-Apr-17
05-Apr-17
| How is it possible that we still debate whether or not student learning results should be included as pivotal data in determining the effectiveness of a teacher? How is it possible that a profession would even remotely consider the idea that its bottom line (learning) would not factor in when examining the most essential ingredient (teachers) of its success? ..more |
By Bambi Betts
25-Feb-17
25-Feb-17
| I have never known a learner who was damaged when a teacher attempted to help him arrive at real understanding. On the other hand, I have known many who have been truly handicapped by teachers who interpret teaching primarily as telling. ..more |
By Sue Easton
25-Feb-17
25-Feb-17
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Over the years, I have had a variety of mentors and coaches, just as I have played the role of mentor or coach, always informally, for many talented educators. These experiences have led me to value and be so excited about the role of instructional coach, which many international schools are now embracing. ..more |
By Sue Easton
26-Jan-17
26-Jan-17
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Different schools approach the teacher leader role in different ways. At the TTC, we have been trying to support these current models through our Teacher Leader Institutes. We believe that all teacher leaders need basic training in organizational structures, communication, change processes, and facilitation. ..more |
By Sue Easton
01-Feb-17
01-Feb-17
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Have you ever been to a workshop where you learned new skills but no one at your school was aware of your true professional growth? A recent Teacher Leader Institute (TLI) addressed this and other concerns by piloting the use of micro-credentials. ..more |
By John Mikton
05-Jan-17
05-Jan-17
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Information is power. This year, the pollsters, news agencies, and pundits got caught out with two big votes, and so many predictions seemed off. Our landscape of information has entered a level of Orwellian curation, and what is news, fact, or reality seems dictated by emotion and perspectives constructed from our own curated news feeds. ..more |
+ 2016
By Bambi Betts
07-Dec-16
07-Dec-16
| Would kids learn better and retain more for longer periods if their learning came by way of an interdisciplinary approach? Are schools just stuck in a subject-based teaching model because that’s how we’ve always done things, or is this truly the better paradigm? ..more |
By John Mikton
20-Oct-16
20-Oct-16
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"When I get home, I’ll ask Siri for the right answer," says a Kindergartner to her partner. "She always knows." A routine response in our classrooms? Or an important moment to understand that artificial intelligence (AI) has embedded itself in our day-to-day lives? ..more |
By Sue Easton
13-Oct-16
13-Oct-16
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"What makes us special?" writes Sue Easton. "That was my focus this summer—my first as Director of the Teacher Training Center (TTC). Even as a trainer, having always looked forward to heading to Miami or London each year, I knew that there was something that set it apart from other professional development opportunities. But what?" ..more |
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"At an early age I started traveling and was fascinated by the fact that people in other parts of the world live, talk and think differently. The more I traveled, the more I wanted to see, and not from the perspective of a tourist, but as a local." ..more |
By Meadow Hilley, TIE Editor
14-Jul-16
14-Jul-16
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Sue Easton has just been named Director of the Teacher Training Center (TTC) and also works with the Teacher Leader Institute (TLI). For the past five years she served as a trainer with the Principals’ Training Center (PTC). ..more |
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TIE is launching a new series of international educator profiles, featuring participants of the PTC, TTC, and CTC. Meet Erika Velez, who with over a decade of experience working as a teacher and administrator overseas has a wealth of wisdom to share. ..more |
By John Mikton
19-May-16
19-May-16
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Welcome to the “GAFA” (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon) world. The”GAFA” world is where most of humanity’s internet users and consumers work, communicate, socialize, learn, entertain themselves, and share, in services provided by one, two, three or all four of these companies. ..more |
+ 2015
By Bambi Betts
19-Feb-15
19-Feb-15
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Recruiting season... a critical and careful process for every international school. And everyone is looking for that perfect teacher--the one with all the right skills, the right experience, and attention to their own professional development. ..more |
By Bambi Betts
28-Jan-15
28-Jan-15
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Calling all experienced principals! Is your school a victim of “The Energy Vampires”? Join Kevin Bartlett and Bambi Betts in London, 12-14 July 2015. ..more |
+ 2014
By Bambi Betts
10-Dec-14
10-Dec-14
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The Principals' Training Center has opened registration for its 2015 Summer Institutes in Miami and London (UK). The 29 programs include PTC, TTC and CTC courses, six of which have already filled. Anyone planning to take a PTC course should act quickly and register now at www.theptc.org. ..more |
By Bambi Betts
14-Oct-14
14-Oct-14
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The PTC has been providing quality training for international educators for over 25 years. But it is what each participant does after leaving the comfort zone of our course that truly matters. We have learned a few things about how best to put PTC learning into practice. ..more |
By David Willows
26-Aug-14
26-Aug-14
| A group of admissions officers tries to make sense of the resounding "No" voiced by the families of new students when asked "Did your campus visit make you more likely to apply to the school?" Could all of that effort and attention truly have been for naught? ..more |
By John Mikton
15-Jul-14
15-Jul-14
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Our lives are so embedded within the digital realm that the two have become inseparable. I invite us to use a new set of vocabularies to frame this paradigm: Appliances, Utilities, Information Flows, Ethics, and Algorithms. ..more |
By Mary Russman
20-May-14
20-May-14
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When I became an administrator later in my career, I thought that would mean I would stop being a counselor. Actually, I find my counseling background helps me be an even better administrator. ..more |
By Virginia P. Rojas
15-Apr-14
15-Apr-14
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See your English learners and their teachers for what they can do in the future, not for what they seemingly cannot do in the present. "All teachers are teachers of English learners," after all. ..more |
By Lee Fertig and Sue Easton
18-Mar-14
18-Mar-14
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Collectively, we have a responsibility to join the conversation about what makes an international school effective. We need deeper insight into the research, and the very design principles of our institutions. ..more |
By Bambi Betts
18-Feb-14
18-Feb-14
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Writing recommendation letters is a quintessential opportunity to help teachers better understand why the practice of averaging must be fully eliminated. ..more |
By Barbara Parker and Kristen Pelletier
04-Feb-14
04-Feb-14
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International schools are admitting students with more diverse learning needs and expectations. International school teachers need to be prepared for this diversity ..more |
By John Mikton
22-Jan-14
22-Jan-14
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Yes, there is the Internet of Things: a world in parallel to ours where our devices, data, algorithms, gadgets, smart phones and digital tools interconnect, communicate, and work independently of our own input or monitoring. ..more |
+ 2013
By John Mikton
01-Jun-13
01-Jun-13
| There is, and it is called online learning. Start re-orienting your thinking around this, says PTC facilitator John Mikton, or prepare for a future as an evolutionary casualty. ..more |
By Theresa Cullen Hill
01-Apr-13
01-Apr-13
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Teacher Training Center course facilitator Theresa Cullen Hill explains why curriculum design is, or should be, an overarching preoccupation in international schools. ..more |
+ 2010
By Bambi Betts
01-Dec-10
01-Dec-10
| Do we have a “responsibility problem” when it comes to breakthroughs in pedagogy? Any profession that wants to remain one has the moral obligation to swiftly integrate into its practice what its own research and experience reveal. ..more |
By Bambi Betts
01-Oct-10
01-Oct-10
| Homework, at its core, is a concept—the notion of continuing the learning begun at school beyond the formal school day. It is not a separate, stand-alone practice. ..more |
