Teacher Training By Dr. Diana Wehrell-Grabowski

August 24th, 2010 Nine states and the District of Columbia were awarded Race to the Top Grants during the second round.The winning phase 2 applications are: District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, and Rhode Island. The Race to the Top state competition is designed to reward states that are leading the way in comprehensive, coherent, statewide education reform across four key areas:

• Adopting standards and assessments that prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace;
• Building data systems that measure student growth and success, and inform teachers and principals how to improve instruction;         
• Recruiting, developing, rewarding, and retaining effective teachers and principals, especially where they are needed most; and
• Turning around their lowest performing schools.

Providing effective professional staff development teacher training opportunities  is a major component of how Race to the Top Grant funds are to be spent. Dr. Diana Wehrell-Grabowski has provided over 650 professional staff development/teacher training workshops nationwide.  All of Dr. Diana Wehrell-Grabowski’s professional staff development/teacher training workshops are hands-on-minds-on, inquiry-based, view Dr. Diana Wehrell-Grabowski’s professional staff development teacher training workshops here.

Read more details about the winners of the second run of The Race to the Top Grants from EdGov here.

I had the pleasure of sharing my enthusiasm and knowledge of science with another great group of teachers yesterday. The director of a local VPK school arranged for me to come and present a three hour hands-on-minds-on teacher training workshop entitled “Connecting Science Across The Curriculum.” It’s beneficial when administration arranges for teacher training/ professional staff development during teacher pre-planning week. The teachers are refreshed after a long summer break, motivated, and looking for new ideas to implement within their classroom. As always my teacher training workshops are conducted in a format that blends science content with the “how to” implement within the classroom. Thus, teachers are expanding upon their existing science content knowledge as well as gaining new hands-on-minds-on explorations to implement within their classrooms. During the three hour workshop teachers were actively engaged in exploring science, mathematics, language arts, literacy, social studies, health, and the arts via an inquiry-based format. We started the morning off with a nature walk around the school campus. The emphasis was placed on nurturing the young child’s natural curiosity as well as developing observational skills in their students. It’s all about making observations and asking questions! Teachers explored life and environmental science concepts, physical and earth science concepts while being introduced to affective methods of connecting science across the curriculum. What a great workshop, and wonderful group of teachers.