Teachers Sharpen Skills at Differentiated Instruction Workshop

Rocky Knoll Seventh-day Adventist School Principal, Jan Yakush, leads the group in song service

Teachers Sharpen Skills at Differentiated Instruction Workshop

Story by V. Michelle Bernard

Many Columbia Union teachers went back to class recently to learn new ways to inspire their students.

More than 70 teachers from across the union, as well as New York, attended a workshop on differentiated instruction (DI), a teaching practice that emphasizes viewing students as individuals and factoring in their various learning levels, interests and styles.

Melissa Dickson, a DI expert, taught the workshop which was held at Union headquarters in Columbia, Md., and at Chesapeake Conference’s Spencerville church in Silver Spring, Md.

“The event was planned to equip teachers with the ‘most effective contemporary methods to enhance student teaching on collective and individual levels,’ says Ham Canosa, EdD, the union’s vice president for education. “If enthusiasm is an indicator of potential productivity, practical application and professional growth, then the workshop was extremely successful.”

Kelly Wiedemann is the director of music at Shenandoah Valley Academy in New Market, Va.,

Kelly Wiedemann, the director of music at Shenandoah Valley Academy in New Market, Va., will teach Sophomore English for the first time this year. She says after attending the workshop she is no longer worried about reaching students that don’t like English.  “This training has boosted my confidence in reaching all the different needs of my students,” she says. “I’m going to have a whole toolbox of cross-curricular activities to make English activities relevant and exciting. I wasn’t sure I could pull that off before.”

The workshop also helped teachers with decades of experience sharpen their skills.

Kalyani Prakasam has taught at Lehigh Valley Seventh-day Adventist School for 39 years.

Kalyani Prakasam, the first-through third-grade teacher at Pennsylvania Conference’s Lehigh Valley Seventh-day Adventist School in Whitehall, has 50 years of teaching experience but was excited about what she learned.“In three days, I learned so much,” she says. “I’ve taught for so many years, but the children have changed the way they learn. Our societal structure, our whole system has changed. …This workshop is preparing us to teach in a different way, to meet the needs of the next century kids, to meet the needs of the 21st century.”

The workshop was made possible by significant funding from the Commonweal Foundation.

Teachers brainstorm during a breakout session