The Valley Day School in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a special education school, has introduced augmented reality to enhance students' social asset and science curriculum learning as well as to offset high frustration levels and emotional outbursts. When the school's computer lab was updated in 2017, included were prepared lessons that can be tailored to individual […]
Two years ago, Elizabeth Rincon was seeking to end the last-minute scramble to cull professional development for approximately 125 special education paraprofessionals on days when teachers had preplanned PD. "Principals had to either swiftly get something together for paraprofessionals in terms of PD or they would email me and I would have to quickly plan […]
While innovations typically involve a high degree of novelty and a paradigm shift, tried-and-true best practices often serve as their launch pad and rocket fuel. In designing and selecting professional development opportunities that harness and reflect best practices in education, there are four key elements for a high-quality experience: authenticity, contextual learning, a creative climate, […]
School districts know that "sit-and-get" professional development isn't working and can have extreme consequences, such as high teacher turnover and poor student performance. To combat this, across the country there is an ongoing, rapid evolution of professional development to be more personalized. While change in education is often slow, this long-overdue advancement is quickly taking […]
Timothy Collier has been teaching high school mathematics for more than 30 years, most of them at McAlester High School in southeast Oklahoma, where he is the department chair. State budget cuts have affected McAlester High School and the district's eight other schools, especially in the area of professional development for teachers, who were facing […]
When it comes to professional development, Regina Teat believes building the instructional capacity of every instructor and classroom teacher is the most effective use of time and money of any program, especially using grant funding. "When the money goes away, the capacity and knowledge through good professional development for the teacher remains" says Teat, Director […]
How closely is professional development linked to student achievement? Professionalism expects learning to be in the collective. We should think of our own learning and growth as part of a mutually beneficial ongoing professional development process. A big part of that idea is that we share and become more transparent in our practice as educators. […]
Every year, nearly 40 percent of food produced in America is thrown into the trash. That trend extends to the 5 billion lunches served in U.S. public schools each year, amounting to an estimated $1.2 billion of annual lunchroom waste, according to USDA data and findings from a two-year study of Boston middle schools. The […]
I work with schools to teach brand and marketing strategies to educators. That job didn't exist a few short years ago. It's not typical work and neither is school branding, which I characterize as "business as unusual." Branding is an empowering trend for educators who move out of their typical professional silos into understanding marketing […]
