Chic Foote

A teacher in New Zealand schools for more than 20 years Chic has been involved in teacher development in both New Zealand and the USA over the past 10 years. She has worked with schools and teachers across all levels from preschool through intermediate and high school and has been involved in graduate and undergraduate programmes in teacher education. In 2000 Chic returned to New Zealand after spending 3 years living and working in Michigan. She is now a consultant to a network of schools in New Zealand developing effective practice through focused learning communities. In 2001 Chic trained in Curriculum Mapping with Heidi Hayes Jacobs and Bena Kallick and returned to New Zealand to implement this powerful framework for curriculum design in the New Zealand educational context. This work has enabled schools to develop on going systematic review processes, cohesive stimulating integration and inquiry learning, and inspire learning conversations across the entire learning community.


School Team Professional Development
Chic has worked both in New Zealand and the USA facilitating the development of school teams as professional learning communities. Chic works with the team to review current practices, identify the goals, and plan and facilitate the development process. This process is developed to meet the needs of the particular learning community. The model can be designed to meet the needs of a cluster of schools or a single school.

To ensure sustainable learning and changes to beliefs and practices the professional development package may include a combination of the following:

• recommended pre reading followed by staff and syndicate review
  
• staff development workshops
  
• in class support
  
• on going support through electronic medium
  
• recommended reading and staff reflection

• Enables individual schools to tailor curriculum design
  
• Is aligned across all levels of learning within the school
  
• Relies on input from all teams within the school
  
• Emphasises the importance of the community within which the school/s are situated
  
• Provides for coherent transitions and learning pathways
  
• Provides a framework from within which all key components and guidelines fro teaching and learning are linked
  
• Integrates all areas of the curriculum
  
• Focus learning on big ideas and enduring understandings
  
• Connects learning within and across schools
  
• Maintains the focus on key literacies e.g. numeracy and literacy
  
• Includes specific focused learning intentions
  
• Detailed assessment strategies and criteria
  
• Differentiation
  
• Emphasis on the skills for learning and application of key competencies, inquiry and thinking skills, and resulting content knowledge