Whole-Faculty Study Groups Fieldbook Lessons Learned And Best Practices from Classrooms, Districts, And Schools

Carlene U. Murphy began her 47th consecutive year of work in public schools in September 2004. She is Director of the National WFSG Center in Augusta, Georgia. She began her teaching career as a fourth-grade teacher in August 1957 in her home-town of Augusta. After 1 year of living at home and teaching, she decided to spread her wings and went to Memphis, Tennessee, where she would teach the fourth grade for 13 years. It is the children she taught in Memphis that she sees in her mind’s eye today as giving her the energy and love for what she continues to do. Returning to Augusta to begin the 1971–1972 school year, she was a classroom teacher for 2 more years before moving into administrative positions. She developed the programs for gifted children in the Richmond County school system and administered those programs for 5 years before becoming director of staff development in 1978. During the 15 years as direc-tor of staff development, she also designed and administered the district’s Adopt-A-School program that received national recognition, and she assumed responsibilities for the district’s public relations functions, including publications and coordinating special events. The 15 years (1978–1993) as the Richmond County (Augusta) School District’s director of staff development brought many accolades to the district and to Murphy. In 1991, Richmond County received the Award for Outstanding Achievement in Professional Development from the American Association of School Administrators. The district also received Georgia’s Outstanding Staff Development Program Award for 2 consecutive years. In 1992, she was awarded the National Staff Development Council’s Contributions to Staff Development Award, one of the organization’s highest honors. She was the first practitioner to receive that honor. Her personal ser-vice to the National Staff Development Council included serving as chairperson of the annual national conference in Atlanta in 1986, as president in 1988, and on the board of trustees from 1984 to 1990. After retiring from the Richmond County schools in 1993, she worked through 1997 as a private consultant for the schools and districts that wanted to implement the process that she would name Whole-Faculty Study Groups (WFSGs). She has written extensively about her work in Educational Leadership and the Journal of Staff Development. From the summer of 1997 to December 2002, Murphy worked as a full-time consultant with ATLAS Communities. She worked withall ATLAS schools in the implementation of WFSGs. She also continued to work with schools not associated with the national comprehensive school reform design.Murphy, Carlene U. is the author of 'Whole-Faculty Study Groups Fieldbook Lessons Learned And Best Practices from Classrooms, Districts, And Schools', published 2006 under ISBN 9781412913256 and ISBN 141291325X.