LEADERSHIP
LEARN LEAD SERVE
Faculty members take on new leadership roles in teaching, coaching, and artificial intelligence By Teresa Messmore, Director of Communications With Lifelong Learning being a Core Value for not just students but also faculty and staff, Magnificat has added three leadership positions this school year to help set teachers and coaches up for success.
Magnificat within the last two years. She is meeting oneon-one with them on a regular basis to provide advice on topics like lesson planning, teaching strategies, and ways to engage students.
“The Leadership Team has tapped current faculty members to take the lead in mentoring new teachers, developing coaches, and harnessing artificial intelligence,” Dean of Faculty and Academics Colleen Greller said. “They are available on a day-to-day basis as resources to help their colleagues continually improve, complementing the professional development and department meetings that are already in place. We are excited to see where they guide us in these important areas of focus.”
DiGeronimo takes inspiration from her experience at St. Martin De Porres High School earlier in her career, where her own teacher coach would review lessons to provide feedback or offer support if she was struggling with a particular activity or group of students. While she had completed bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education, the immediate, on-the-job feedback was invaluable in realworld situations.
Mentoring New Teachers
Instructional Teacher Coach Liz DiGeronimo
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MAGNIFICAT MAGAZINE
Social studies faculty member Liz DiGeronimo is taking on the additional role of Instructional Teacher Coach to mentor colleagues who are new to teaching or joined
“I honestly think that’s really when I learned how to be a teacher,” she said. When she came to Magnificat in 2021, she felt that the model could benefit her new colleagues and proposed the idea to Dean Greller, who agreed. DiGeronimo reduced her teaching load from five to three sections of Advanced Placement United States History to allow time to meet with teachers and observe them in the classroom. Her feedback does not replace the annual evaluations by administrators, but rather provides ongoing support and dialogue