The Park School faculty consists of 8 academic administrators, 122 teachers (21 part-time), and 7 interns and aides. These teachers combine high academic and professional achievement with well-developed teaching skills that enable them to motivate students and meet their diverse needs. The average Park School teacher has more than 20 years of teaching experience; over 60% hold advanced degrees.
Park faculty use their talents and interests to create innovative and challenging programs--they create the curriculum. Recognizing that this activity takes concentrated work and consultation with colleagues, Park initiated the F. Parvin Sharpless Faculty and Curricular Advancement Program (FACA) in 1989, believed to be the country's most comprehensive endowed summer faculty program.
FACA enables teachers to share their expertise through intensive collaborative work, to draw on fresh input from outside professionals, to read, research, write, and discuss - at full pay for a month each summer - all in the service of providing the best possible education for Park School students.
Since 1989, interest from the FACA endowment has provided 645 faculty grants in support of 144 projects; 80 percent of Park's eligible faculty have been involved in one or more projects over the 17-year period, and planning and implementation of FACA work now go on year-round. Through FACA, substantial work has been devoted to curricular areas such as mathematics and science, to broader issues of school practice like gender equity, community service, and standardized testing; and to exploration of new methods to enhance student learning, ranging from computer technology to whole language theory. To an extent which could not have been anticipated, faculty have chosen to use the FACA program to work together in collaborative groups, often crossing disciplines and divisions.
