Do you feel like you have 100% motivation at your school? If we don’t have motivated staff, it will be hard for us to have motivated students! So how can we create opportunities for motivated staff?

Give Your Educators a Better Professional Development Experience

Like what we do in STEM4Real, the best way to motivate your teachers is to equip them with quality and engaging professional learning. Why? Because it brings their joy back into the profession! No one wants to be “talked at” for hours and then check the box for professional learning.

You may find a good curriculum or two, but how do you know if it is the right one?

Here are some things you can look for:

1. Is the professional learning standards-based?
2. Does the PD provide a framework and plan for implementation? 
3. Is there a checkpoint or follow up after the PD or is it just a binder that gets put away?
4. Do they address anti-racism, anti-bias and equity in education?
5. Do your teachers leave the PD excited and motivated?

We make sure that the professional learning we offer in STEM4Real includes all that is listed above.

Utilize the DO-KNOW-THINK framework

In STEM4Real, we plan with teachers using the DO-KNOW-THINK framework. It helps us ensure that we are truly creating robust learning plans that are not just memorization based, but are truly focused on students doing and thinking as well.

DO: We call this section the student practices. They can be the science and engineering practices, the standards for mathematical practice or any other 21st century practices that engage the students in the DOING of learning.

KNOW: This section refers to the actual content to be learned. In science, it would be the disciplinary core ideas. For mathematics, it would be the CCSS or state-adopted learning targets 

THINK: We refer to this section as the cross-cutting concepts. There are 7 listed in the Next Generation Science Standards:  patterns; cause and effect; scale, proportion, and quantity; systems and system models; energy and matter; structure and function; and stability and change. These are the ways students can think about their content, across the content.

You can also achieve the same results with your own teachers! To help you implement that, here is a lesson planning tool that incorporates the DO-KNOW-THINK Framework:

Feel free to reach out to us to schedule a free consultation on your professional learning plan. We would love to create a plan to help you address student achievement for all students!

Love,

STEM4Real
Teaching #4Real