The Professional Development Program outlined on these pages is the result of nine years of hard work and study by many in the St. Ignatius community. First, Steve Phelps, sensing the need for Professional Development that would fit the culture of a Jesuit high school spent much of his sabbatical in the 1994-95 school year studying effective and ineffective models of professional development in large and small public school districts, Catholic high schools in the Bay Area, and Jesuit schools throughout the country. He wrote a "modest proposal" for the 1995-96 school year that was not only accepted by the St. Ignatius community, but expanded to its present outreach to our colleagues throughout the Bay Area.

Most of the work in designing the original program was done by Steve Phelps, the Professional Development Committee, and a committee of Regents and faculty in a collaborative process designed to incorporate the program into the school culture. This group was formed from volunteers on the faculty with the understanding that the Principal, the Assistant Principal for Academics, and the Professional Development Director would be ex-officio members of the committee and that it was desirable to have representation on this committee from all stakeholders in the school.

Over the last few years we have completed on-campus master's and four credential programs, continued to integrate technology into our curriculum, sent 22 teachers from a dozen schools to Israel, implemented and refined our Excellence in Teaching Program, and reduced the teaching load of a full-time instructor to 4 classes per week. The extra teacher time is being used to improve the professional and spiritual lives of faculty and to provide time to work collaboratively in learning communities so they can provide the best education possible for every student. We continue our successful Summer Curriculum Grant Program and our sponsorship of numerous faculty study projects throughout the United States and, occasionally abroad.

We continue, with more than two dozen partner schools, to sponsor courses from the Research for Better Teaching group from Boston in the Bay Area and to provide training in leadership, cooperative learning and technology. Our goal is to provide the best staff development programs available in the country. This year we worked hard to supplement our staff development programs with new opportunities made available to us with No Child Left Behind Funds.

We hope that our program, available to you on our web page, will result in you learning and sharing with us as we all struggle to design educational experiences that will meet the needs of each of our students.

Steve Phelps, Ed.D, Director of
Professional Development
November, 2003