Well this was my first “real” major change that I devised and set forth in motion. We had found from past few summer professional development sessions that teachers were coming in, learning some tools and forgetting what they learned before the school year started. This was not only a waste of their time but a waste of our efforts as well. We needed to make a change.

I proposed our first course (Integration Academy) be reworked to put the learning back in the hands of the teachers. We changed our focus to concept-based approach so instead of teaching tools we were taking learning concepts and having teachers find the tool that they thought was best for the work. Previously we were pushing teachers to base their lessons on inquiry and discovery yet we were spoon-feeding them the information during their learning time. By aligning our modeling with the classroom expectations, the teachers were put in the seats of the students, allowed to struggle and truly learned more during those sessions than ever before. The transfer to the classroom was obvious and teachers were retaking the course from previous years because of the change.