A New Level of Professional Development
SAU STEM Center for K-12 Education is excited to offer a new level of professional development:
Targeted Professional Development (TPD).
TPD is a competency-based, focused, professional development training designed to increase educator effectiveness and improve student learning. The professional development consists of:
- 3-5 days of face-to-face training
- Mentoring throughout the school year
- Submission by teacher of artifacts
- Development of Teacher-Leaders
Traditional Professional Development
Professional development has traditionally been measured in seat-time- the actual number of hours of attendance in a workshop. Often, it doesn’t promote collaboration, increase teacher effectiveness or improve student learning. Teachers report that traditional PD is boring and ineffective in changing their practice. What does research say about effective professional development? Can PD improve a teacher’s practice?
Effective Professional Development
Research has found that effective professional development has very specific characteristics.
Characteristics:
Learning Forward and the Learning Policy Institute have put forth research that states effective PD must:
- Be content focused
- Incorporate active learning
- Support collaboration
- Use models of effective practice
- Provide support
- Offer feedback
- Be sustained
The SAU STEM Center has used these standards to created research-based, effective professional development. Currently 5 Targeted Professional Development trainings have been developed. Click on link for a more detailed description.
- DOK/Aspire,
- Integrated Curriculum Development,
- Modeling Expectations during Professional Development,
- Science Practices as Teaching Strategies,
- Modeling in Mathematics with Multiple Representations
These TPD’s address areas of importance for administrators, teachers and students. For each TPD’s, educators may select between 3 levels of training.
In Level 1: The educator attends the face-to-face portion of the TPD with no further commitment. Participants receive PD hours only for the face-to-face time.
In Level 2: The educator attends the face-to-face portion of the TPD and commits to submitting a limited number of artifacts illustrating implementation of the TPD objective: student work, teacher work, written reflection. Participants receive PD hours for the face-to-face time and two PD hours for the successful evaluation of the submitted artifacts.
In Level 3: The participant attends the face-to-face portion and commits to a full semester or year to implementing the TPD objective. This level includes follow-up mentoring for the educator and requires submission of multiple assigned artifacts showing implementation of TPD objectives and professional growth. Participants receive PD hours for the face-to-face and between 6 and 10 PD hours for the successful evaluation of the submitted artifacts.
Details
The Targeted Professional Development will engage educators in best practices, modeling a variety of strategies shown to increase student learning. Participants will create professional learning communities during the face-to-face meetings and continue working with the community throughout the year. TPD facilitators and SAU faculty will serve as mentors for the participants and support them as they grow in the TPD objective. Educators will have opportunities to implement the skills and knowledge gained through the TPD with their students and receive feedback from administrators, facilitators and SAU faculty.
Level 1: $60/day
Level 2: $100/day
Level 3: $150/day
(Note: The payment for the trainings does not pay the facilitators. The money collected will be used to support the growth of STEM Center, purchase equipment and supplies to be used by the participants, and reimburse facilitators for the increase in travel required for mentoring.)