Patriots STEM Elementary

An example of a unique professional development opportunity in which our teachers participate involves our partners at Discovery Place's Education Studios. Doug Thompson, Project Manager at Discovery Education Studios, works with the STEM coaches at Patriots and Coltrane-Webb Elementary to develop content specific PBL training for each grade level. This content is directed to specific grade level standards and is designed to meet needs in our specific classrooms. Teachers participate in these trainings twice a year. We provide substitute teachers for these days so teachers can spend the entire day learning ways to integrate their content into PBLs. Teachers also participate in a sample PBL using their content and can incorporate this sample lesson into their classroom immediately. Teachers provide input as to what topics they would like to learn about during these sessions. 

 

During the 2013-14 school year, our API and various teacher leaders led a yearlong professional development on implementing Readers Workshop. During the 2014-15 school year, staff development was offered to our staff centering around the principles and strategies associated with the Math Workshop model. We also have several teachers each year attend Greg Tang math training, a training which immerses our math teachers in Greg Tang’s hands-on problem solving techniques. 

 

Cabarrus County Schools is dedicated to providing quality professional development to its teachers through its three year professional development plan.As CCS continues to implement high-quality learning experiences for students, there are four key areas of understanding that all teachers and administrators will have as a foundation for the work.  These areas include: Building the Infrastructure for Teaching and Learning, Understanding Grade Level Content, Utilizing Best Practices and Resources in the Classroom, and Fostering Student Understanding. In order to provide professional development experiences in each of these areas, professional development sessions will be offered multiple times throughout a school year and on-going throughout a three year cycle. The goal is for every CCS elementary teacher to have completed each professional development workshop by the end of his/her third year with Cabarrus County Schools.

 

 

Academically and Intellectually Gifted

In order to address specific types of learning, Patriots STEM Elementary offers a variety of professional development options and differentiates for classroom application of professional development sessions. To reach our high achieving students, all Patriots teachers attended a professional development session titled Differentiating Tasks for the Gifted Learner. During this session, our  AIG specialists shared tasks, resources, and techniques that help our teachers continue pushing our high-flying students to grow. We also have several teachers enrolled in a local program called GLEE: Gifted Local Educators Endorsement. Teachers have volunteered to attend this yearlong professional development in order to learn more about ways to differentiate for the gifted students at Patriots. The goal is for these educators to earn both a local endorsement signifying they are qualified to teach our academically gifted and for them to share their learnings with colleagues. Finally, all staff members are scheduled to attend professional development this spring titled The Gifted Learner Profile. This is another session presented by our AIG specialists. 

 

Low-Performing/EC

In order to provide classroom support for our low performing students, teachers at Patriots attend professional development geared toward our at-risk students.  This school year various teachers have participated in the following workshops: Targeting Low-Performing Readers with Research-Based Interventions, Exploring Math Interventions, Direct Instruction/Reading Mastery, Workshop Model Training, Read Naturally, Otter Creek: Developing Math Fluency with Low-Performing Math Students,  Make and Take: Reading Interventions, and Understanding the Autistic Learner. 

 

Cultural Equity 

Our staff was recently introduced to the concept of cultural equity through an activity called “Sharing Personal Culture” . The intent of the activity was to serve as a springboard into the implementation of  the principle's found in Gary Howard's book We Can't Lead Where We Won't Go: An Educator's Guide to Equity. All teachers will be participating in this multi-year initiative with the vision being to eliminate race as a predictor of academic and social outcomes. We will engage in sessions focused on the following topics: tone and trust, personal culture and personal journey, from social dominance to social justice, classroom and job-specific implications and applications, and systemic transformation and planning for change.