Post #18: Strategic Vision #1: Fabulous Faculty

In my last post, I gave an overview of our new strategic growth plan which establishes a vision of the future we want to grow into and use to grow the school’s enrollment by the end of 2023. In this post I want to expand further on vision statement number one:

APDS will serve as a center of excellence for faculty development, where all faculty members are actively engaged in professional growth and professional communities.
When we surveyed all stakeholders (students, parents, alumni) with the Southern Association of Independent Schools Value Narrative Survey in the fall of 2019, they all rated faculty the area of the school that has the highest value AND for which we perform at the highest level. In other words, the majority of our stakeholders value our teachers. Therefore, vision statement number one is about valuing, developing, and improving the quality of our teachers. In order to continue to meet community expectations and live up to this first vision statement, we established five objectives:

  1. Develop a Talent Quotient Index evaluation tool. This new rubric establishes our expectations and norms across six performance categories; positional professionalism, talent, energy, engagement, mission, and culture. Our division heads and other leaders use this aspirational rubric and its language to conduct coaching conversations focused on personal improvement. This tool was developed during the 2019-2020 school year and was implemented during the 2020-2021 school year.
  2. Empower faculty task force teams to examine current practice versus the latest educational research and methods. During the 2019-2020 school year, faculty task force teams met to consider how we might improve our craft after considering best practices and research regarding homework, brain science, critical thinking (teaching “how to think”), STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and math) instruction, and our “portrait of a graduate.” Faculty teams delivered recommendations to our division heads at the end of the school year, and we started implementing changes this year.
  3. Improve funding for professional memberships for faculty. It is critical that our faculty members stay connected to professional learning communities in their disciplines and areas of expertise. Instead of asking teachers to self-fund these memberships, we intend to redirect a portion of our professional development funds (for conference attendance) to reconnect all our faculty to online networks so they can leverage their expertise and resources throughout the year. 
  4. Improve funding for advanced degrees for faculty. When others ask what I do, I say I am in the “growth business.” Schools were created to grow better brains and people. We want our adults to set the example as the “lead learners” as well as broaden their repertoire of teaching skills and deepen their content area knowledge. To that end, we are increasing the use of our professional development endowment to offset the cost of obtaining an advanced degree for those faculty members who do not currently have one.
  5. Develop and host the premier regional professional development conference. This goal is the stretch goal--one that is meant to push us. If we envision Prep as a center of excellence for faculty development, then we would not only invest more in our own faculty development but other schools would come to learn from us. There are great independent schools across the country who have created such conference experiences, just none in this part of eastern Georgia and western South Carolina.

Since our founding 60 years ago, Augusta Prep has provided an excellent education designed to inspire students and equip them for college and career success. We remain passionate about teaching kids how to think, not what to think. To continue this tradition of academic excellence we are prioritizing our greatest asset: our teachers. This vision statement and its five objectives help us establish our expectations for excellence and develop a culture of continuous growth and improvement.
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Augusta Preparatory Day School

Augusta Preparatory Day School is an independent, college preparatory school serving children ages 2 through Grade 12 from the greater Augusta-Aiken area. Augusta Prep seeks to enroll a group of diverse students. We follow an open admission policy, whereby qualified candidates are admitted without regard to religion, race, nationality, economic background, or ethnic origin. 
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