Faculty from both the middle and upper school campuses attended Understanding by Design’s daylong workshop Nov. 11 to learn about the most effective way to plan a lesson.

Understanding by Design is an organization that focuses on creating a standardized curriculum constructor model that improves communication between teachers when planning lessons.

“I’ve known about the organization for at least 20 years,” Head of School Jeanne Huybrechts said. “I attended several of their workshops and seminars when I was first the Director of Studies at the school and wanted to understand their model in order to be able to work with new teachers particularly who may not have gone to education school or learned curriculum development techniques.”

Teachers broke off into small groups and learned how to build curricula by determining the final goal of a lesson before developing the lesson itself.

“It was really nice to get to work with different faculty members that are not on my team for the classes that I teach,” math teacher Laffitte Lamberto-Egan said.

Huybrechts said the workshop would improve teachers’ ability to collaborate

“The beauty is in the details,” Huybrechts said. “I think it’s important for all of us because it gives us common vocabulary and a common model that we can use in our many team collaborations, so that’s the value.”

Faculty also held department meetings to reflect on the workshop.

Lamberto-Egan liked the ideas expressed in the workshop, he said. When meeting with the math department, it was very apparent that many teachers had already been successfully implementing the techniques taught, He said he looks forward to continuing to learn from his colleagues.