Meadowfield Elementary School
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Principal: Paula Stephens |
Richland County School District One
Telephone: (803) 783-5549
Fax: (803) 695-3079
525 Galway Lane
Columbia, SC 29209
Meadowfield is proud to be a University of South Carolina Professional Development School. As one of USC’s first PDS sites, established in 1991, we have benefited many times and in many ways over in the past 19 years. Several USC graduate courses have been offered for teachers at our school, and USC professors also have provided after-school professional development sessions for our staff and teacher candidates. We have hosted pre-service methods classes for undergraduates and regularly serve as a host site for teacher candidates in early practicum experiences. Our USC Liaisons have truly fostered connections between us and the USC community. We participate in continuous collaboration with professors, graduate students, and undergraduate students. We are excited to work with teacher candidates every year and are thrilled when many are selected to join our faculty as part of the Meadowfield family.
One of the most significant accomplishments in our PDS relationship has been the quest to become the first National Paideia Model School in South Carolina. This decision was spearheaded through our PDS research project which involved identifying and implementing a viable school renewal process. The Paideia School model is learned in stages during a three year implementation period. We received support, encouragement, professional dialogue, and communication from our USC PDS partnership throughout this endeavor.
The first implementation year involved learning and practicing Socratic seminars. Students shared ideas and values in an open-ended discussion surrounding a text. The texts varied and included poems, paintings, songs, fables, quotes, and different types of artifacts. The second implementation year focused on the development and presentation of “Coached Projects.” A Paideia Coached Project is an integrated unit of study that leads to a student production or performance of real value to an audience outside the classroom. Coached Projects provide both teachers and students the opportunity to focus on the production of relevant academic work and to measure the quality of that work against authentic standards. The third implementation year involved student assessment. Students take an active role in the responsibility of their learning and the communication of their progress. Student-led conferences provide students an arena to share with parents and significant adults their educational progress. At the completion of the nine week grading period, students invite their parents to attend a conference with their teachers concerning the student's educational goals and progress. The conferences are facilitated by the student and follow an agenda that the student has developed prior to the meeting. During the conference, the student shares selected work from his/her portfolio collection and develops new goals. Student-led conferencing engages parents, and attendance at these conferences proves this to be one of the most effective tools for increasing parental involvement.
We are proud to report that through positive support from teachers, parents, students, the community, and our USC partners, we achieved in 2009 the status of South Carolina’s first National Paideia Center Model School.