I provided professional development for the Unit Organizer Routine and Concept Mastery Routine during my apprenticeship time. For each, I provided a SIM Overview as well as information pertaining to the specific CER. Additionally, we did a "Book Walk" to highlight key information in the respective CER handbooks. I did find that I spent a bit of time discussing how you can use a particular CER to launch, float, and tie up a unit/topic depending on what fit best for each teacher's classroom. The teachers with whom I worked did find this information the most helpful, because it help them to see how they can have choice in implementation based on the needs of the content and/or students in each class. Within each professional development session, I modeled how to complete each routine and gave teachers an opportunity to draft a routine of their choosing as practice. At this point, the implementation plan for each CER took a different route.
When providing professional development for Concept Mastery, I was working with teachers participating in the VDOE' ASSET academy at James Madison University. The downside of presenting in this manner is that I do not personally work with the teachers who participated. I did attempt to connect each to a SIM professional developer following the conference in hopes the would be able to connect with these teachers and provided continued support for fidelity of implementation. Unfortunately, I do not know how effective this format was in terms of continued fidelity of implementation.
The professional development and implementation with the Unit Organizer Routine felt much more successful, because of my direct contact with the teachers who participated in the professional development. For these teachers, after I modeled the routine, we ended session
#1 and the teachers' homework was to draft a routine with content of their choosing. About three weeks later, we reconvened and the teachers practiced co-constructing with their colleagues. Additionally, we were able to have a discussion around any questions and concerns they thought of since our first session. I felt this was helpful in alleviating any fears these teachers had prior to implementation with their students. Following session
#2, I visited the teachers' classes and observed them during instruction and provided feedback using the fidelity of implementation checklist. Unfortunately, soon after my second observation and feedback opportunity, the administration allowed the teachers to stop implementing due to them being overwhelmed by other school and division initiatives. The teachers, however, did like the routine, so I hope this means I can begin reimplementation during the next school year.
