Professional Development for Teacher Stability, Support, and Growth
What types of professional development did you offer your teachers in the last year? Was it emergency training or well thought out training followed up by coaching?
Hopefully, your teachers survived the pandemic challenges: Google Meet, Teams, Zoom, Chromebooks, iPads, laptops! Where do we go from here? Now that you have time to evaluate and reflect on the experience and survey teachers, planning future teacher training is the next step.
Your experienced teachers need to be rejuvenated and see a way forward. Your new hires need to be caught up – and fast! Professional development in the form of just-in-time teacher training is available for all of your needs. Whether you are a Google or Microsoft district, we’ve got engagement tools and best practices to help you grow exponentially.
Can Professional Development Increase Equity?
Now that teachers and students have devices, how do they move forward? We all saw the lack of equity across the country, and it wasn’t limited to hardware. Students across the country seek the same quality resources and teaching programs that our highest performing students have.
We believe all students can learn and excel if provided the right atmosphere and support. Our training and coaching can help your teachers grow and settle in confidently. We personalize every professional development session based on your vision as well as data we collect from your teachers to meet their needs. Our past coaching experiences with 1:1 teachers will help your school and district save money, time, and energy because you won’t have to figure everything out on your own. From efficient launches to digital citizenship to lesson planning, we are prepared to help your teachers build confidence with the technology while keeping their sanity.
Is Returning to Normal Best for Students?
Here are some ideas for Why You Don’t Want to Return tor Normal this School Year. Now is the ideal time to transition your teachers and students to one of the newer research-based learning models: personalized learning, competency-based learning, authentic learning, project-based learning, and blended learning. What can you take with you as you move forward in (hopefully) post-pandemic education? If your teachers already have a strong digital workflow and are looking to increase student agency and offer self-paced work and blended learning, we can help build your foundation. We successfully trained and supported elementary, middle, and high school teachers in blended learning including station rotation, flipped learning, and flex learning.
If you are looking for someone to increase engagement as well as teacher knowledge using technology, then you need to use Cultivating the Learning!
Professional Development We Offer
Our professional development offerings are vast and varied. Blended learning, increased student engagement, student agency, self-paced learning, personalized learning, competency-based learning, project-based learning, and authentic learning are all possible with teacher training, coaching, and support. Whether you want to train your instructional coaches and specialists, focus on a cohort of high-flying teachers, or train every teacher in the school, we are ready to work with you.
We offer both synchronous and asynchronous teacher training to meet the busy schedules of your teachers and the budget of your school or district. Schedule a free call now to discuss whether we are a good fit for you.
Profesional Development Gallery
Google Workspace for EDU Training
Are your teachers just getting by, or are they rockin’ it out in Google Workspace (previously g Suite)? How is their confidence level? Are they functioning at substitution level or redefinition in SAMR? Are they including the 4 Cs (communication, creativity, critical thinking, collaboration)? We can help your teachers from beginner through advanced. Pick one of our popular Google Workspace Trainings, or let us build a unique training just for you.
Increasing Student Engagement
Student engagement is hard in person, and online we have to figure out who or what our competition is and bring students back to class. Get their heads in the game. It is possible using new strategies and some existing and possibly new-to-you tools. We focus on the tools you already have access to and can make some recommendations if you are willing to purchase some. Read more here.
Data Analysis and Spreadsheets
The best teachers in your building have strong relationships with their students; their students know they care. Building relationships online takes a conscious effort and time. We model for teachers how to use the tools at hand to build relationships. We analyze why we do certain activities in the classroom and ask whether they are appropriate or necessary in an online setting. Finally, we share out a collection of ideas that teachers can use immediately in their classes.
Google Classroom
Google Classroom has become the LMS of choice for a majority of American classrooms. Teachers need Level 1 training to get started at substitution level and Level 2 training to dig deeper and get creative. We also offer an asynchronous online course for tight budgets.
Coaching Support
Most teachers prefer 1:1 coaching support the same way student prefer 1:1 support from their teachers. We provide in-person and remote coaching support both during class as well as in planning sessions. Our coaches are available to plan, execute, and debrief lessons for creativity and reflection.
Teacher Training
Not all trainings are created equal. We strive to survey your teachers’ skills and meet them where they are. Whether in person or remote, we use both synchronous and asynchronous strategies to model for teachers what they can do for and with their students.
Chromebook Training
While Chromebooks are more like a laptop than a tablet, there is a learning curve before using it. Let us provide professional development either synchronously or asynchronously to help your teachers, paraprofessionals, and students start using their chromebooks like pros.
We offer beginner through advanced levels of PD as well as accessibility training for your exceptional students.
iPad Training
Whether you are using Apple software or G Suite, our professional development is designed to help you improve your use. Our trainings have been fire tested in 1:1 settings, and teachers leave with a renewed confidence and energy.
We offer hardware professional development including taking the pad out of the box, choosing an MDM, organizing them on carts, and protecting the charging cables and bricks from theft and loss. We also cover student SOPs (standard operating procedures) and how to handle shared devices.
We also offer software and app covering the installed Apple software and G Suite apps on the iPad.
Finally, we have a special training for accessibility features on iPads to help your exceptional students as well as your littles who cannot read yet.
Device Management & SOPs
All the purchases in the world are no good if there is not a device management system in place with SOPs. We’ve seen $15,000 worth of devices sit unused at backs of rooms because teachers were too nervous or didn’t have time to bother.
We learned the hard way in the trenches. We know what teachers need. As a result, our professional development training gives teachers exactly what they need to get started and manage their devices with little to no trouble.
We encourage student empowerment as “device geniuses” to take responsibility and manage the devices with initial training. Who doesn’t want to be on the poster of iPad or Chromebook Geniuses?
Free Consultation
If you are interested in working together, book a FREE 25-minute consultation.
“[Taking part in the Digital Learning Cohort] has been a life and teaching changing experience.”
Free Consultation
If you are interested in working together, book a FREE 25-minute consultation.
Top 5 Chrome Teacher Extensions
Saving time is the number one priority in most teachers' minds. If we can save a few clicks on a task we do repeatedly throughout the day, and you multiple that by 180-190 days, that's a lot of time saved. As a teacher and incurable efficiency seeker, I turn to Google Chrome for teacher extensions...
Tracking Student Progress
Is There a Way to Track Student Progress? It's that time of year again; high-stakes testing season is upon us. Teachers are stressed, worried that their students will not perform well even though they all worked hard all year, perhaps harder this year than any other. As teachers, you want to be...
Remote Learning Lessons
It's the end of May, and the school year is officially over. Ahhhhhhh. Thank goodness. I don't know if I would have survived another week with my 15-year-old son. In my previous post, the teacher in me was talking. The schedule I created was for someone in authority to present to students. ...
How to Manage Remote Learning Part 1: Make a Schedule
Only second to the medical community that is on the front lines during this COVID-19 pandemic, admins, teachers, parents, and students are today's heroes. In less than a week's notice, teachers, parents, and students have moved to homeschooling and online learning. While many companies are...
What is a student tracker and how do I use it?
When I started teaching in 1989, we didn't have standards. We had textbooks and the common sense we were born with to cover what we thought students needed to be successful in this world. As an English teacher, I chose which books I wanted to teach. I knew I needed to cover writing which...
Free Background Remover to Improve Green Screen and Presentations
If you are looking for a great free graphics tool to erase the backgounds on your images, check out Remove.bg.
How Is It Possible That AP Students Hate Learning?
Curiosity If you don’t know me personally, you might not know: I am insatiably curious. I love learning. I always have and hope I always will. Imagine my shock and surprise when 3 of my 4 children revealed that they hate learning. I think appalled better describes the emotion I felt. How is it...
Cultivating Collaboration in Blended Learning
If you find collaboration in station rotation difficult or unsuccessful, then these recommendations might be helpful. Collaboration is not something students do naturally, so nurturing and cultivating it might do the trick.
Changing Climate and Culture Building-wide
As a coach assisting teachers with technology integration and personalized learning, I notice patterns arising from teacher to teacher. One pattern that I have noticed is that a teacher, no matter how strong he/she is, hits a wall whether earlier or later when it comes to progressing to the next...
7 Steps to Stronger Student Collaboration Activities
If you are trying to encourage collaboration in your classroom and are having trouble, read on. You will see 7 steps that will help you build stronger student collaborators in collaboration activities. What’s All the Hubbub? Why is collaboration such a big deal all of a sudden? Everybody wants...
