Teaching & Learning
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Karey Williams
Deputy Superintendent
(706) 217-6780
karey.williams@wcsga.net
Lynn McCurdy
Administrative Assistant
(706) 217-6731
lynn.mccurdy@wcsga.net
Teaching & Learning
Teaching and learning team members strive to support our teachers and staff across all grade levels and content areas to design meaningful, challenging and engaging work for students that pushes them to seek improvement and achieve at higher levels. Whitfield County Schools is committed to using effective instructional practices that are non-negotiable in every classroom. Click below view the Instructional Expectations for Student Success.
Led by Deputy Superintendent Karey Williams, the teaching and learning team work as liaisons to provide clear communication for their colleagues in the schools and deliver regular opportunities for improvement to teachers throughout the school district.
The WCS teaching and learning aim is to create educational experiences that are authentic and challenging for students. To meet that goal, students are given the opportunity to use various pieces of technology to enhance their learning experience.
Our students are tiny humans being molded into the adults they will be in the blink of an eye. I hope that my students remember a teacher who loved, cared, and cheered for them as they took on life. They are our future, so let’s love them well.
- Annie Worley, WCS 2023 Teacher of the Year
Varnell Elementary School
Instructional Expectations
The faculty and staff of Whitfield County Schools are committed to using effective instructional practices that are essential in every classroom. Our goal is that all students in Whitfield County Schools will succeed because teachers lead and guide them to achieve at their highest levels.
We will teach the Georgia Standards with fidelity by:
- Designing lessons aligned to the standards
- Identifying key concepts of the standards
- Using learning intentions to provide clarity for teachers and students
- Asking students to communicate what they are learning, why they are learning it, and how they will know when they have learned it
All teaching and learning activities will reflect a shared understanding of what students should know, do, and understand and will be built around a common framework for instruction that consists of:
- Opening - Engaging students with the content through activating strategies centered around the learning intentions and success criteria
- Explicit Direct Instruction - Engaging students with the content through modeling and using exemplars while identifying standards, learning intention(s), and key vocabulary
- Work Period - Engaging students with the content through using performance tasks, checking for understanding, eliciting student responses, and providing feedback
- Closing - Engaging students with the content through summarizing strategies to assess student learning
We will monitor students’ progress in order to respond to their academic and social-emotional needs by:
- Developing a variety of assessments
- Analyzing student data continuously
- Identifying students’ levels of understanding standards (exceeding, meeting, or not yet meeting)
- Differentiating instruction based on classroom performance and assessment results
- Using a variety of instructional strategies
Our learning environments will be built on:
- Safe and welcoming learning communities that support the social-emotional needs of our students
- Positive relationships between students, staff, and families
- Effective procedures and routines implemented with consistency
- Collaboration that supports student engagement
Our communication will be:
- Clear, consistent, and timely
- Focused on building partnerships with students, families, and communities