Nancy Rapp: Master Practitioner Portfolio

 Standard 3: Middle level teachers understand major concepts, principles, theories, standards, and research related to middle grades curriculum and use this knowledge in their practice. 

It is probably not a surprise to anyone that teachers are given a curriculum to follow. This year, teachers transitioned from the North Carolina Standard Course of Study to the Common Core. All teachers can retrieve the new curriculum requirements via the DPI website,  and at South Davie, our common drive has access to pacing guides we created at county-wide meetings. One of the pacing guides can be found above. 

Beyond simply knowing the curriculum, Davie County provides many professional development opportunities throughout the year. We have had speakers at our school to discuss the latest educational techniques as well as had county-wide meetings where we share helpful teaching resources and useful information connected to our teaching practices. 

Additionally, South Davie is a Piedmont Triad Education Consortium (PTEC) School of Distinction. We've earned this title largely due to our participation in many of the conferences the organization offers. The conferences cover everything from diversity to leadership in the classroom to curriculum-specific lectures. Our principal suggests that we each attend a meeting a year, and I attended the February conference on differentiation and incorporating culture in the classroom.