Mentoring Program Goals

The goals of the Ankeny Community Schools Beginning Teachers program include:

• Promote excellence in teaching
• Increase student achievement
• Build a supportive environment for teaching and learning
• Practice and implement effective teaching practices
• Promote the personal and professional development and support of classroom teachers
• Encourage inclusion of beginning teachers within the community of Ankeny
• Demonstrate and practice skills related to the Iowa Teaching Standards

With the demographics of the ACSD consisting of mostly white, protestant students, the District places special emphasis on programs in all buildings that deal with gender, culture, and character traits. Each elementary building has their pride or character groups and the secondary building use their homebase and advisement groups to discuss such issues. In addition, every teacher integrates multi-cultural, gender-fair and global practices and information into their individual and District curriculum maps. Any information, skills, or practices listed in the District maps, must be taught by every teacher who teaches that subject. In addition, the protocol for selection of textbooks and materials contains global education and multi-cultural, gender-fair practices as one of the criteria for selection.

These groups and the materials selection protocol complement the global education focus in the District as described below.

Global Education

Global education is integrated throughout the curriculum in the Ankeny Community School system. Any selection of new resources for curriculum uses a selection criteria sheet. Global education is one of those criteria, so any resources that are purchased for use with students will contain information from around the world as is appropriate to the content area.

In addition, the Ankeny Community School system is one of the few districts in the state that has a K-12 Modern Language program. The Modern Language program, not only teaches Spanish and French, but also deals with the cultures and countries that use Spanish and French as their primary languages.

Many students throughout the entire school system write to pen pals in other countries. This correspondence is carried on through letters or e-mail. The students are exposed to many global issues and problems through such correspondence.

Every year some secondary students participate in an exchange with our sister cities in France and Mexico. These students visit France and Mexico and students from the sister cities visit Ankeny. The secondary students in the district look forward to the sister city students’ visits each year. They especially enjoy learning about the student’s schools’ and education programs.

Teachers throughout the district strive to include literature, current events, facts, and other information that is appropriate to content and skills being taught in their classes. For instance, each grade/level, K-5, focuses on a different culture and all of its components throughout the school year. The elementary schools build their diversity lessons around these cultures.

To keep current, the secondary schools each use Channel 1 as a way to tie global education to issues in the classroom and curriculum. Diversity is then tied into lessons that relate to Channel 1 and the appropriate curriculum.

The Teachers on Special Assignment have started working with the staff on a process to integrate all infusion areas into the individual curriculum maps and the Curriculum Frameworks. Global education is one of these infusion areas, and the teachers will be working on integrating this area into their individual maps during the 2001-2002 school year.

Using everything listed above and other cyclical information, such as elections, in all countries, teachers in the district integrate global education into all areas.