teacher professional development

Collaborative Teaching for Stronger School Community

"I truly feel that if I did not have these people supporting me as a teacher, I couldn't keep moving." - Katie, on her coworkers

In school, collaboration is key. This week, we're discussing the importance of carving out time for teachers to work together to solve tough problems and share inspiration. (We'll also talk about why staff meetings don't always count as collaborative time!) From veteran teachers and those who are just starting their careers, we've gathered reflections on how collegiality bolsters student achievement, reduces turnover in the profession, and fosters strong community. We'll also bring you the latest headlines in education news from around the country: S.B. 83 looms over higher education institutions in Ohio, sex ed. faces a setback in Gwinnett County, GA, and MOOSE are on the loose in Maine. (You'll just have to listen.) 

Don't forget to sign up for our email newsletter, launching soon! Stay up to date on the latest education news headlines, teacher resources, professional development opportunities, and more! Visit our website for more info.

Sources & Resources:

Wikipedia - List of inventors killed by their own invention

Vox - Men have fewer friends than ever, and it’s harming their health By Aubrey Hirsch

The Columbus Dispatch - Ohio Senate passes SB 83, controversial higher education bill. What would it do? by Anna Staver

Ohio Bill - SB 83

The Ohio Legislature - Senate Bill 83

Edutopia - Keeping the Door Open to Collaboration By Emelina Minero

District Administration - The benefits of teacher collaboration By Carla Thomas McClure

News Center Maine - Online Holocaust modules available for students for free By Hannah Yechivi

Maine - MOOSE History of Genocide & the Holocaust Learning Progression

Season 2 of the Impactful PBL Podcast ended in May which marked two years of this podcast. The podcast started as a “learn in public” project so that I can document my professional journey and share insights about what I’m learning about project-based learning. In this episode, I’m sharing a progress update on my 2021-2022 goals and why I'm pausing the podcast.

Tune in to...

• Explore what it means to learn in public and why I started this podcast
• Hear why I'm shifting to building in public
• Examine successes & failures with my 2021-2022 professional growth goals
• Hear about my professional growth goals for the 2022-2023 school year and what it means for this podcast

Are you ready to become a high-impact project-based educator?

1. [FREE] Download the Impactful PBL Roadmap™  planning document to craft your next project-based learning unit + receive weekly tips to enhance your facilitation skills via email.
2. [FREE] Check out The Impactful PBL Roadmap™: 9 Steps to PBL Success e-guide which covers the nine phases you need to design a memorable, authentic, and rigorous learning experience for K-8 students via project-based learning.
3. [PAID] Join our Impactful PBL Roadmap™: Launch program, an online course, coach, and community of educators exploring and implementing research-backed project-based instructional practices.

As I support teachers to design project-based learning experiences, I notice confusion often arises during phase 5 of the Impactful PBL Roadmap™ planning process. Phase 5 is about creating students' daily learning experiences or lessons. Teachers are usually excited about exploring project-based learning as an instructional method. However, when asked why they haven't implemented project-based learning in their classroom as of yet or why they don't facilitate a project-based learning unit often, teachers typically state that time is a factor.

I generally hear, "I don't have time for projects because I have to teach the standards or follow the district-provided curriculum." When I hear these sentiments, I immediately know that the teacher is unclear about how to draft a PBL unit plan. This episode is for you if you have uttered these statements before.  In this episode, we will explore how to write a PBL unit plan.

Are you ready to become a high-impact project-based educator?

1. [FREE] Download the Impactful PBL Roadmap™  planning document to craft your next project-based learning unit + receive weekly tips to enhance your facilitation skills via email.
2. [FREE]  Review the Impactful PBL™ Toolkit, which provides proven strategies and invaluable tips for building a sustainable project-based learning culture at your school without overwhelming the instructional leaders, teachers, and students.

An essential part of the project-based learning experience is producing a public product or artifact to showcase knowledge for an authentic audience. Depending on the PBL topic and driving questions, the audience could be peers, parents, or community members.

Teachers often wonder what students can create for projects besides designing a poster or presentation. Students may also struggle to come up with ideas without seeing examples or without being given a list of example public products. This episode will explore how to utilize the driving question to help students brainstorm public products to share their knowledge. The goal is to create learning experiences that apply to the real world by connecting what students are taught in school to real-world issues, challenges, or problems.

Are you ready to become a high-impact project-based educator?

1. [FREE] Download the Impactful PBL Roadmap™  planning document to craft your next project-based learning unit + receive weekly tips to enhance your facilitation skills via email.
2. [FREE]  Review the Impactful PBL™ Toolkit, which provides proven strategies and invaluable tips for building a sustainable project-based learning culture at your school without overwhelming the instructional leaders, teachers, and students.

It is essential students buy into their project since they will be exploring their complex question or challenge over an extended time. While hooks for traditional lessons are typically short, less than ten minutes, project-based learning hooks may vary in length to sustain students' interest over a more extended period. A PBL hook typically occurs at the start of the unit, although it is not uncommon for teachers to integrate several ways to cultivate students' interest throughout the project. In this episode, we will explore how to get students excited about the project-based learning topic.

Are you ready to become a high-impact project-based educator?

1. [FREE] Download the Impactful PBL Roadmap™  planning document to craft your next project-based learning unit + receive weekly tips to enhance your facilitation skills via email.
2. [FREE]  Review the Impactful PBL™ Toolkit, which provides proven strategies and invaluable tips for building a sustainable project-based learning culture at your school without overwhelming the instructional leaders, teachers, and students.

In traditional learning experiences, subject areas are taught in silos, and teaching often focuses on the "what" of a subject area. Students do not synthesize the material when they memorize parts of a cell in isolation or memorize the steps to solve a math problem without understanding why the process works. Educators know that knowledge should not be measured by simple content regurgitation. It is often encouraged to connect multiple content areas within lessons. In this episode, we will explore how to promote STEM education during PBL?

Are you ready to become a high-impact project-based educator?

1. [FREE] Download the Impactful PBL Roadmap™  planning document to craft your next project-based learning unit + receive weekly tips to enhance your facilitation skills via email.
2. [FREE]  Review the Impactful PBL™ Toolkit, which provides proven strategies and invaluable tips for building a sustainable project-based learning culture at your school without overwhelming the instructional leaders, teachers, and students.

We've all participated in a fundraiser at some point in our life, especially as a student. It seems kids bring home items to sell every year to support a team, club, or school. Although many students do not necessarily think about whether or not their fundraising efforts are supporting a cause, they gain some valuable skills during the process. You may be excited (or at least interested) in incorporating a fundraising component into your PBL curriculum but wonder how to get started. As you can imagine, executing a successful fundraiser takes planning. In this episode, we will explore how students can support a cause via project-based learning?

Are you ready to become a high-impact project-based educator?

1. [FREE] Download the Impactful PBL Roadmap™  planning document to craft your next project-based learning unit + receive weekly tips to enhance your facilitation skills via email.
2. [FREE]  Review the Impactful PBL™ Toolkit, which provides proven strategies and invaluable tips for building a sustainable project-based learning culture at your school without overwhelming the instructional leaders, teachers, and students.

This week on History Detective, I am pleased to introduce you to Just a Teacher Podcast.

This episode is an interview with Brendan Murray the author of the book The School: The Ups and Downs of One Year in the Classroom. 

If you would like to support the podcast, you and Buy Me a Coffee

Write a review at Podchaser!

The History Detective Season 1 & 2 Album is  now available on Spotify and all of your music streaming services.

Accompanying teaching resources for season 1 and 2 episodes can be found on my Amped Up Learning Store or on my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

Contact: Twitter @HistoryDetect, Instagram @HistoryDetective9, email  historydetective9@gmail.com

History Detective Website

History Detective theme music written and performed by Kelly Chase.

Click to join my mailing list

Teachers Pay Teachers Store

Grab a copy of History, Her Story, Our Story from Amazon!

If you would like to support the podcast, you and Buy Me a Coffee

Write a review on Podchaser, Apple or Spotify.

The History Detective Season 1 & 2 Album is  now available on Spotify and all of your music streaming services.

Contact: Twitter @HistoryDetect, Instagram @HistoryDetective9, email  historydetective9@gmail.com

History Detective Website

All  music written and performed by Kelly Chase.

Recently I’ve heard from many of you that listen to the podcast, attend my workshops, or communicate with me on LinkedIn that you're finishing up a project-based learning unit.  I've been checking in with past and current members of the Impactful PBL Network to hear updates.  I love to listen to what's working, what's not working, and what you're learning.  

I know it can be easy to wrap up a project-based learning unit and immediately move on without really having closure.  When this happens, it can lead to a feeling that PBL was just "a thing we did that one time."

But if we want to build a robust project-based learning culture in classrooms, we must do some practices consistently. Reflection is a critical practice to implement. I often hear from teachers that they skip the reflection process due to timing, but trust me, making time for reflection is essential. 

In this episode, we will explore the role reflection play in the project-based learning process.

Are you ready to become a high-impact project-based educator?

1. [FREE] Download the Impactful PBL Roadmap™  planning document to craft your next project-based learning unit + receive weekly tips to enhance your facilitation skills via email.
2. [FREE]  Review the Impactful PBL™ Toolkit, which provides proven strategies and invaluable tips for building a sustainable project-based learning culture at your school without overwhelming the instructional leaders, teachers, and students.

On this episode of What Will We Take With Us?, a series featuring our conversations with education leaders across the United States on how they grappled with the COVID-19 pandemic in K-12 education, Dr. Suzanne Newell of Austin Independent School District in Texas details how the district focused on supporting students and teachers by providing instructional blueprints with prioritized standards to help guide instructional time, as well as how they emphasized professional collaboration to address "learning loss" (also referred to as unfinished learning) and maximized time for valuable remote professional development.

Are you a teacher looking ways to fund resources and projects for your classroom, without having it come out of your paycheck? Writing grants is a skill that will help you provide projects for impactful learning experiences - as well as meet the basic learning needs of your students. In this episode, you'll learn six grant writing tips for creating proposals that get funded and develop school business partnerships.
Click here to make a Donor Choose account and here to see more grants on GetEdFunding.

Want to read the blog posts that go along with these episode? Click here for tips 1-3 and here for tips 4-6.

Looking for  encouragement and teaching strategies to start out your week? Then you should  get the Monday Message!

Get your free ebook on beginning a teaching career, The Thrive Guide, here!

Listen to more episode and read my blog at erinsponaugle.com

To download your FREE checklist The Great 88: Rules, Routines, and Expectations to Go Over and Over, click here and feel confident establishing your classroom management in the new school year.

For more resources on classroom management, time management, and preserving your mental well-being so you can avoid teacher burn out, visit www.erinsponaugle.com.

You can find more classroom resources for your upper elementary classroom by visit Next Chapter Press on Teachers Pay Teachers.

To follow Erin on Instagram, visit https://www.instagram.com/nextchapterforteachers/

Prefer Facebook? Check out Next Chapter Press at https://www.facebook.com/erinsponauglewv/

Rather just stick to Pinterest? Head on over to https://www.pinterest.com/erin_sponaugle/

https://www.georgiawoodbine.com/

PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/minddogtv

Sponsors:
https://podmatch.com/signup/minddogtv

https://mybookie.com Promo Code minddog

https://record.webpartners.co/_6_DFqqtZcLQWqcfzuvZcQGNd7ZgqdRLk/1

https://apply.fundwise.com/minddog

https://myvitalc.com/minddog. promo code minddogtv

https://skillbuilder.academy/dashboard?view_sequence=1601856764231x540742189759856640&promoCode=MINDDOG100OFF

https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=599839&u=1659788&m=52971&urllink=&afftrack=

https://enticeme.com/#minddog

If you're tired of the conventional professional development that your school offers then this episode is for you.  As teachers, we consistently hear more professional development,  but do schools ever stop think, is our professional development actually serving and helping teachers to become better at their craft? On this episode, we'll be discussing the pitfalls of teacher professional development. After listening to this episode, you will come away with some practical solutions on how to combat this and empower you with practical suggestions for your administrator on how to make teacher professional development days more meaningful and powerful.

Ready to master your craft? Get the:  Ultimate Guide to Mastering your Craft as a Teacher

Stay connected to Teachers Impact

Keep up here: Website

Let's Talk here: Email|  Twitter |  Instagram

Brie Griffin, Professional Development Director, GYO Chicago

• briffin3@luc.edu
• https://growyourownteachers.org

Elissa Frazier, Podcast Host

• Email: elissajfrazier@gmail.com

Monica Fitzgerald teaches reading to vulnerable 7th graders in Syracuse, New York. She has taught in the North Syracuse Central School District for 24 years and has experience working as a classroom teacher for grades K–3, a Reading Recovery Teacher, a Reading Teacher for grades K–7, and a Literacy Coordinator. Monica received her bachelor’s in Inclusive Elementary/Special Education from Syracuse University, and master’s in Reading from SUNY Oswego. Currently, she is working on her second master’s degree in Instructional Design, Development & Evaluation at Syracuse University. Prior to becoming a teacher, she worked as a weather specialist in the United States Air Force. In her spare time, Monica enjoys reading, golfing, and traveling, and she volunteers for Make a Wish, American Cancer Society, and Honor Flight Syracuse.

The Teachers in America series profiles K–12 teachers across the country. Hear firsthand from the people who are shaping young lives in the classroom every day. This episode was originally recorded at the 2019 Model Schools Conference.

 Read more: https://www.hmhco.com/blog/hmh-learning-moments-teachers-in-america-monica-fitzgerald-syracuse-ny

Alexa Tegtmeier is a third-grade teacher at Curtis Guild Elementary, which is part of Boston Public Schools. Alexa has been teaching for five years and just completed her second year at Curtis Guild. While she was an undergraduate student at Northeastern University, Alexa took a class in urban education that inspired her to volunteer with JumpStart through AmeriCorps. Then, with Teach for America, Alexa taught a summer school course in Chicago, Illinois, and spent two years in Miami, Florida. She received her master’s degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Education before returning to teach in Boston, Massachusetts.

The Teachers in America series profiles K–12 teachers across the country. Hear firsthand from the people who are shaping young lives in the classroom every day.

Read more: https://www.hmhco.com/blog/hmh-learning-moments-teachers-in-america-alexa-tegtmeier-boston-mass

Holli Merkel currently serves as the elementary principal for Itasca ISD. She's also a counselor and teach parenting at the Johnson County Crisis Center. Holli has an amazing daughter who, she says, "is my life." Her passion is helping others and she feels blessed to be able to pursue her love for advocating for others.