Key Characteristic 4: Growth in Learning

STANDARD # 25

Leaders promote action research by professional staff members to improve their practice and advance learning.

Elements

Leaders create and preserve a culture that invites inquiry, reflection, and dialogue about instructional problems and issues relevant to the institution and/or individual learning environments.
Professional staff members, as a group or as individuals, engage in action research using an inquiry-based process that includes identifying instructional areas of improvement, collecting data, and reporting results to make informed instructional changes.
Leaders provide and engage in learning opportunities for professional staff members to implement action research.

Evidence

Professional development is key to improve the instructional efficiency and learning from reputed organizations like ACTFL, MDE (MN Dept. of Education) and MCTLC (Minnesota Council for Teaching Languages and Culture). The formal training based on National standards, IPA, instruction methodology by Dr.Anu and formal OPI Workshop and OPI Certification were examples.
Training sessions with fellow Tamil teachers provide lot of opportunities to correlate standards expectations with real world issues in syllabus and instructions. The content is continuously updated based on these second/foreign language acquisition concepts

Evidence 1: Review “Assessment Methodology” section in the MNTS Tamil School website https://www.mntamilschool.org/grading/. This provides a strong framework for assessment which is consistent and regular exercise. The assessment report, performance data and perception data are the critical inputs to the planning. School has a continuous Improvement framework following Plan Do Check Act cycle. School analyses the assessment data and continuously re-invest in the improvements. The improvements are on various dimensions like, Teacher Training and enablement, Instruction methodology, curriculum, learning management system and technology infrastructure etc.

Evidence 2: Refer to the MNTS syllabus overview in the website under https://www.mntamilschool.org/mnts-syllabus-overview/. This talks about the evolution of the intuitive courseware and the materials. Feedback forms (https://www.mntamilschool.org/syllabus-feedback-forms/) categorized by the levels and conferences are used to continuously enrich the syllabus and material. The syllabus is fully aligned with ACTFL and CEFR national learning standards.

Evidence 3: Continuous improvement process: https://www.mntamilschool.org/continuous-improvement-2023-24/