Teacher professional development sessions put on by collegues twice a year. Learning strategies, expat living, and technology are explored.
Teacher professional development sessions put on by collegues twice a year. Learning strategies, expat living, and technology are explored.
Spring 2025 professional development sessions.
Teacher professional development for Fall 2025 featured many engaging sessions that sparked collaboration, growth, and innovation. Topics ranged from classroom management strategies and digital portfolios to AI tools, student immersion, and thoughtful discussions on educational philosophies. The well-prepared sessions provided opportunities for teachers to share expertise and bring new approaches into their classrooms.
Thank you to Ms. Sophie, Mr. Brad, Mr. Kevin, Mr. Shaw, Mr. James, Mr. Fisher, Dr. Moo, Mr. North, Mr. Steve, Ms. Sarah, Ms. Kate, Mr. McCormack, Ms.Kim, Mr. Ken, Ms. Raquel, Mr. Ethan, Ms.Lauren, Mr. Ben, Ms. Alex, Ms. Lei, and Mr. Shiers for leading inspiring and practical professional development sessions for our staff.
As International School teachers, we’re all tasked with taking on the role of being a content AND language teacher for our so many of our students. What magic tricks can we use to be both? We each have tips and tricks for how to SPELLify (St. Paul English Language Learners) a lesson, and we also are constantly learning ways to adapt and scaffold our teaching to meet the needs of our students. This session will be focused around what areas of support YOU need to SPELLify! We will work together to share resources, problem solve, and provide insights on how the materials, strategies, or language in the classroom can be scaffolded!”
The most common form of abuse is neglect. In this session I will share my learning from prior professional development I have undertaken with colleagues as it is highly connected to the demographic of students we teach, most especially in our affluent Vietnamese student population. By the end of the session, attendees should feel confident in their ability to better recognize signs of affluent neglect, understand how it can powerfully and negatively impact students, and how they can respond in keeping with proper child safeguarding procedures should they believe a child is being neglected.
This session will be focused on collective problem solving and be run in a restorative circle format. We will be asking each participant to come with a challenge or problem in their classroom they have been trying to solve (Could be academic, behavioral, structural, anything!) and we will facilitate as many problem solving conversations as time allows. This will be heavily normed on strengths based and solution focused language only and will be structured.
FOCUS: Deep listening and reframing how we view and approach our challenges. Our hope is that you will leave with a new perspective regarding our challenges.
AI is a powerful tool, and an increasing number of applications are emerging. Over the past few weeks, I have developed several interactive tools to enhance teaching and learning. Teachers are invited to join the presentation to see live demonstrations and explore how these tools can be integrated into the classroom. This session is particularly valuable for any teacher interested in creating AI-powered classroom tools for their lessons.
Ben will lead a round table discussion on the impacts of AI in learning, outcomes, and methodology. The primary text that this conversation is Kosmyna et al (June 2025) – the yet-to-be reviewed study of the impact of LLM usage on brain development. Educators will discuss our experiences and consider the outcomes of AI usage, and how these outcomes should shape our educational practices.
This will be a philosophical discussion based on several questions we are forced to ponder as educators. It will be held in the format of a Socratic Seminar, not only as a way to model this type of discussion for your own classes, but as a way to challenge your own ideas and perhaps open your mind to new perspectives. Topics to discuss: grading, discipline, and SEL.
The Shadow a Student Day challenge was created to encourage administrators and teachers to learn about the various things our students face each day. As the name implies, I will be following two students from the time they board their bus in the morning to the time they finish with their after school activities. This will not be an evaluation of the teachers, but rather an observation of the obstacles our students encounter each day. For the presentation, I will provide findings of the research, a personal reflection and information for our education team to consider.
This professional development session is designed to support ES homeroom teachers in using our current elementary curricula—Into Reading (ELA), FOSS (Science), and enVision (Math). Bring your current unit, your laptop and your questions because the focus will be on providing extra support. The goal is to help you gain more understanding of the programs, locating and organizing materials, and addressing common challenges with practical solutions so you can leave with more clarity, and more confidence.
This professional development session is designed to support ES homeroom teachers in using our current elementary curricula—Into Reading (ELA), FOSS (Science), and enVision (Math). Bring your current unit, your laptop and your questions because the focus will be on providing extra support. The goal is to help you gain more understanding of the programs, locating and organizing materials, and addressing common challenges with practical solutions so you can leave with more clarity, and more confidence.
This session is an introduction to reading Vietnamese pronunciation & tones correctly so you can sound less like an American. I will teach Vietnamese pronunciation from the English-speaking perspective to help your Grab driver actually understand what you’re saying. This will be a mix of lecture to introduce the sounds & practice time.
We will not have time to cover the huge number of compound vowels in Vietnamese language during this session, so I plan to hopefully run a second session on that in the Spring – participating in this session and the one in the Spring would amount to a complete overview of Vietnamese pronunciation.
This session will focus on using Seesaw’s newest updates to streamline classroom instruction and assessment. Participants should bring their laptops and any curriculum materials they would like to digitize. After exploring how to use Seesaw’s built in AI for grading, how to tag standards, and how to leverage some of Seesaw’s other newest features, participants will have dedicated time to create resources that fit their own classroom needs.
Examples of what you may choose to work on include:
• Upgrade weekly Into Reading fluency checks so Seesaw can mark and score automatically
• Design summative math quizzes that self-grade
• Backdate and tag standards on existing activities to build a gradebook on Seesaw
Spring 2025 professional development sessions.
Our staff came together for Spring Professional Development, a day of learning, collaboration, and personal growth. during our Professional Development (PD) session. The sessions helped our educators advance their skills, exchange ideas, and bring new strategies into the classroom, ensuring the best learning experience for our students.
Thank you to Mr. Aguilar, Mr. Nappa, Mr. Fisher, Ms. Shiers, Ms. Lei, Ms. Alex, Dr. Moo, Mr. Dwyer, Mr. Shaw, Ms. Lala, Mr. Alan, Mr. Brad, Mr. Toby, Mr. Shiers, Mr. Sean, Mr. North, and Mr. Justin for preparing some great teacher professional development topics.
We will explore the principles for creating Thinking Classrooms, discuss strategies to support inclusivity, and provide differentiated opportunities for students to engage in a classroom environment, in particular strengthening their inquiry skills and developing conceptual understandings.
Important topics for Expat International Educators includes ideas on: things you should keep current in your home country, important documents, voting, finances and investing, retirement, taxes, etc. This is coming from an American expat perspective but most info is applicable to all expats.
Problem-Based Learning (PBL) is an engaging instructional approach that encourages students to learn by solving real-world problems, fostering critical thinking, collaboration, and inquiry. I plan to deliver this topic to my colleagues through an interactive presentation that includes practical examples across grade levels, discussions on implementation strategies, and opportunities for hands-on experience with PBL activities, ensuring that everyone leaves with actionable insights for their classrooms.
This session will be addressing a strategy called “Thin Slicing”. This is a strategy from the Thinking Classroom pedagogy that addresses the need for skill practice. This strategy uses leveled problems to allow all students to access the skill at a basic level and activiate prior knowledge, then gradually build into more complex levels.
We will explore two strategies: one for understanding and managing behaviors and the other for analyzing the reasons behind the behavior. Together, these strategies provide a structured approach to behavior management, allowing teachers to create effective intervention plans and foster a supportive learning environment for their students.
In this workshop, participants will discuss the importance of recognizing a culturally diverse classroom and why it is important to acknowledge and know the various traditions, values and beliefs. Participants will also do a quick self-reflection to identify their identities and how it might affect their teaching practices. The workshop will include methods of connecting with students from different cultural backgrounds, learning about cultural beliefs about how students learn and establishing effective communication with parents.
We will look at possible the difference between the three words, common misconceptions between them. then, determine accommodations and determine a) which ones would be beneficial for a given student, b) which ones are reasonable for your classroom setting, and c) how to adjust the accommodations to fit your classroom, or adjust your classroom to fit the accommodations.
Participants will learn about several digital tools used in STEAMD and how they can be used to in other curricular areas. Attendes will need to bring their laptops to the this hands-on presentation.
This presentation will address with the advantages, in terms of engagement, cognition, and community building, of utilizing Readers Theater as a regular instructional practice, along with examples of how it might be applied in a supplementary way in disciplines other than the humanities. The session will conclude with a challenge to attendees to organize themselves into impromptu acting troupes in order to perform in a readers theater lesson.
This professional development course will equip science teachers with effective strategies to engage and support English Language Learners (ELLs) in the science classroom. Participants will explore the principles of Process-Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL), a student-centered approach that emphasizes active learning, collaborative problem-solving, and critical thinking. The course will provide practical strategies for adapting POGIL activities as well as general strategies to meet the diverse needs of ELLs.
In this session I will be introducing attendees to a tool/strategy for use in teams to problem solve in a highly structured and collaborative manner. The tool/strategy will be of benefit to any educator but particularly useful to those who find themselves in leadership positions or faced with challenging problems/situations in which they are seeking additional professional insights.
This session will be focused on collective problem solving and be run in a restorative circle format. We will be asking each participant to come with a challenge or problem in their classroom they have been trying to solve (Could be academic, behavioral, structural, anything!) and we will facilitate as many problem solving conversations as time allows. This will be heavily normed on strengths based and solution focused language only and will be structured.
FOCUS: Deep listening and reframing how we view and approach our challenging. Our hope is that you will leave will a new perspective around our challenges.
Fall 2024 professional development sessions.
Thank you to Ms. Lauren, Ms. Alex, Ms. Lei, Ms. Caitlin, Ms. Clare, Mr. North, Mr. L, Ms. Oshida, Ms. Stacey, Mr. Ben, Ms. Amy, Ms. Annie, Mr. Kevin, Mr. Shaw, Mr. Fisher, Ms. Sophie, Mr. Shiers, and Ms. Patricia for preparing these interesting classes.
We will explore the AI tools Brisk and Diffit and its potential to differentiate content in the classroom. Brisk simplifies the process of tailoring lessons to meet diverse student needs, allowing teachers to focus more on instruction and less on manual adjustments. Diffit provides activities to assist our multi-language learners. By streamlining these tasks, you’ll not only enhances learning outcomes but also significantly eases the workload for yourself. (If you attended a similar session in March, then you will not need to attend again this time around).
The most common form of abuse is neglect. In this session I will share my learning from prior professional development I have undertaken with colleagues as it is highly connected to the demographic of students we teach, most especially in our affluent Vietnamese student population. By the end of the session, attendees should feel confident in their ability to better recognize signs of affluent neglect, understand how it can powerfully and negatively impact students, and how they can respond in keeping with proper child safeguarding procedures should they believe a child is being neglected.
This session will be focused on collective problem solving and be run in a restorative circle format. We will be asking each participant to come with a challenge or problem in their classroom they have been trying to solve (Could be academic, behavioral, structural, anything!) and we will facilitate as many problem solving conversations as time allows. This will be heavily normed on strengths based and solution focused language only and will be structured. FOCUS: Deep listening and reframing how we view and approach our challenging. Our hope is that you will leave will a new perpsective around our challenges.
I have been asked many times about how SPS students become so organized and responsible and are represented in many of the leadership opportunities at SPASH. Many want student leadership but do not know how to develop or maintain it. I would love to help with that. Let’s have that discussion and I will share some of the tools I use.
The purpose of this session is to help participants experience visible thinking and learning routines in a classroom setting. Visible learning and thinking routines provide a window into the minds of our scholars. During this session, attendees will learn about teacher moves that help to promote visible thinking and learning as well as have time to discuss how these routines can fit into their own classroom setting.
Don’t understand what SEL actually means (and too afraid to ask)? Feel confused on how SEL works in a content class like math or science? Join Annie as she covers not just the “What” but the “What Now” as it relates to SEL strategies. She will also cover how you can use Wayfinder to support you in making your classroom practices.
This workshop will explore how leveraging multiple languages in the classroom can enhance student learning and promote linguistic diversity. We will look at the theory behind translanguaging, discuss practical strategies for integrating students’ linguistic resources, and share best practices for creating an inclusive learning environment. The goal is that we will leave with actionable tools and ideas to effectively implement translanguaging in our own classrooms so that we can better utilize and manage language usage in the classroom.
Let me share how I stopped thinking of myself as a teacher in a classroom and instead started thinking of myself as a personal trainer in a learning gym (not like those creepy trainers but like those fancy ones the hollywood actors have). I’ll exhibit the multiple layers of differentiation/personalization I use in my class: from diagnosis, goal setting, and training plans to grading, assessments and student output, and then we will brainstorm and workshop how this could function in any classroom.
We want as many of you as possible to stay at SPASH as long as possible. Unfortunately, the nature of our business is that people do move on. The admin team cares about you both personally and professionally and have supported offering this PD for those of you looking to either move on at the end of the year or to get your resume updated if you have not done so in a while. This is identical to the session I ran last September so no need to attend this year if you did so last year. Topics covered include: Resume Do’s and Don’ts, Good / Bad examples, Optional / Agency or School Dependent info, Recruitment Agency info, Resume feedback after you have made edits based on the session information
When I was a student, I loved English and despised Socratic Seminars. When I became a teacher, I noticed how anxious formal discussions made students, but I loved the depth of thought the discussions could produce. In this PD, I’ll share how I’ve gamified the Socratic Seminar to ease student anxiety while maintaining academic rigor and increasing student engagement. We’ll test out the version I use, and I’ll also share small modifications that you could easily implement in your next seminar!
HHMI Biointeractive is a free & intellectually deep tool that can be used to teach biology, chemistry, and environmental science concepts at the MS/HS/undergraduate level. In this session, Ben Krentz & Amy Mach will present the usage of various features that are useful both in the classroom activities & digital labs, as well as constructive for professional development.
Join this session for an informative introduction to the new elementary STEAMD (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math, and Design) program. Discover its relevance to our school community, tour the new STEAMD maker space, and learn how basic hand tools used effectively, and by designing with empathy can empower your students to become innovative, critical-thinkers.
I will be teaching the classroom behavior management system called CHAMPS, using EdPuzzle to show how EdPuzzle can be used to make engaging classroom lessons. Focus is the benefits of CHAMPS and how to use it with a side goal of introducing how EdPuzzle can be used to improve lessons.
For the Spring professional development sessions, A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) was at the top of many minds and how it can be used as a teaching aide. Teaching topics also explored discussions about how students learn. For the expat lifestyle, topics covered financial tools and advice for how to manage money and life insurance in Vietnam.
Thank you to Mr. Josh, Mr. Dwyer, Mr. Ethan, Mr.Steven, Mr.Bob, Mr.Kevin, Mr. Patrick, Mr. Shiers, Ms.Melissa, Ms.Lei, Ms.Lauren, and Ms. Carly for being our educational leaders!
In a phonics training for teachers, they will acquire essential skills to effectively teach reading and writing. They will learn about the systematic connection between letters and their corresponding sounds, as well as various strategies to help students decode and recognize words. Additionally, they will explore methods to enhance phonemic awareness and improve overall literacy development in a fun and engaging manner.
Help participants experience visible thinking and learning routines in a classroom setting. Visible learning and thinking routines provide a window into the minds of our scholars. During this session, attendees will learn about teacher moves that help to promote visible thinking and learning as well as have time to discuss how these routines can fit into their own classroom setting.
Learning can be defined in many ways, but most psychologists would agree that it is a relatively permanent change in behavior that results from experience. In this session I will hit some high points on research into what is most effective for memory retention and student motivation as well as delving into different learning styles. The format will be a mix of lecture and activities that apply the ideas.
This session is primarily for people who expect to be in Vietnam for at least a couple years and want to learn more about ways to manage their money while living here. Topics will include interest-earning savings accounts, easy payments, sending money home, options for receiving your salary, health insurance perks, life insurance, and real estate. This will primarily be lecture format but with lots of opportunities for questions.
Teachers will learn information on things to think about regarding keeping their expat life on track while overseas. Additionally, some important things to keep current as they live life abroad. Topcis include Finances, Important Documents, Taxes, Retirement, Stateside Logistics, Educator Credentialing, etc. This is focused mainly on USA issues.
In this short lecture and no-shame workshop, we will discuss the benefits of pronouncing your students’ names correctly and receive a crash course on Korean / Vietnamese name pronounciation. Then, we will break out our class rosters and practice together. Ooo! Interactive!
Writer’s Toolbox is an adaptive AI writing program designed to help students at all levels and in all subjects master writing without doing the work for them. This progam is useful for all subjects and all grade levels, and I will be giving a demonstration of how my 9th grade students have been using it and how it can be used across a wide variety of subjects and grade levels.
School administrators and several teachers lead a series of professional development (PD) sessions for all staff. In addition to the PD sessions that each teacher seeks individually, this opportunity gave them a chance to learn more about each other’s teaching style. Topics covered included using science and artificial intelligence (AI) to teach young children, understanding differentiation and behavior strategies, learning Vietnamese as a foreigner, and more.
Our collegues had a great time getting to know each other a little bit better. Learning points from these sessions can be carried into classrooms and in life to improve the learning environment for our students.
Thank you to Mr. Russel, Mr. Ethan, Dr. Moo, Mr. Robert, Mr. Justin, Mr. North, Mr. Shiers, Ms. Lei, Dr. Star, Ms. Annie and Pop for being our educational leaders!
My objectives would be to demystify AI, show how AI can help us as teachers, show ways to prevent and/or identify students using AI, and show ways students can ethically use AI, among other things. I would ask teachers to bring their devices with them for a hands-on look at some of the tools available and how to best use them.
This session is for anyone looking to update their resume, whether you are planning to job hunt this year or not. I will do a brief presentation on some key things Administrators look for and what you should be looking at when updating your resume. Things to put in and to leave out. Feel free to bring a copy of your current resume in either print or digital form and I will try to give some quick feedback to everyone who has their resume there.
The RULER behavior system is a social-emotional learning (SEL) program developed by the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. It is designed to help students understand and manage their emotions, build relationships, and make responsible decisions. By the end of this professional development session, participants will be able to: Define the four components of the RULER behavior system, explain how the RULER behavior system can be used to improve student behavior and social-emotional learning and identify strategies for implementing the RULER behavior system in their classrooms.
The purpose of the session is to help staff who are newer to Vietnamese language, or just don’t understand how to pronounce it, to connect Vietnamese sounds to those they already know from the English language. By the end of the session, they will hopefully be able to read and pronounce many of the consonants, vowels, and tones more accurately. This will be done through a mix of explanations and practice. Leave your shame and self-consciousness at the door.
Every Wednesday when students go home at 2:15 p.m., SPASH teachers participate in a variety of professional development opportunities to improve their skills. Last week, our teachers took on expert roles and shared their knowledge with the rest of the staff.
Thank you to Corey Gagne, Hannah Stobaugh, Patricia Bravo, Lewis McLean, Sage Abbey, Josh Langenbach, Stephen Bucheit, and Henry Abbey for being our educational leaders!
Topics of these professional development sessions included:
