CULLOWHEE—A team of Jackson County educators worked on creating more teacher leaders in the district during a specialized program from the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching, a nationally recognized leader in professional development.
For four days in Cullowhee, the 13 educators took part in a variety of efforts to help teacher leadership flourish in the district. The Teacher Leadership Institute program is a new offering designed to respond to the needs of school districts.
CULLOWHEE—Registration for the North Carolina Center for Advancement of Teaching (NCCAT) Online courses is open.
NCCAT Online is freely available to all North Carolina licensed educators at no additional cost to you or your district. NCCAT Online Courses are short, self-paced modules where participants can earn 3, 5, or 10 contact hours, depending on the number of assignments participants are asked to complete.
CULLOWHEE—North Carolina educators have several opportunities from February through June to attend the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching (NCCAT), a recognized national leader in professional development programming for teachers.
Exceptional Children (EC) teachers have all of the traditional needs of beginning teachers, plus a lot more--and often those additional needs incur the greatest need for support. Open to teachers in their first, second, or third year of EC teaching, this program supports motivated beginning EC teachers by strengthening their knowledge base and classroom expertise. Through experiential learning, teachers will explore differentiated instruction, brain-compatible teaching, co-teaching, student advocacy, small group facilitation, and more. Come prepared to build professional competence and confidence, improve student achievement, and reinforce your commitment to this critically important profession.
Designed for teachers in grades 4–12.
Teaching reading skills in English/Language Arts classes and across the disciplines is an almost guaranteed way to help students retain content. Unfortunately, the tendency to focus on the content is a real enemy to the ultimate goal of building reading skills. Without a repertoire of reading strategies that can be applied to any text, reluctant, struggling and disengaged students are not assured enough opportunities to read throughout the school day. In order to teach students to read effectively, teachers must be sure that they are not simply suppliers of information about a particular text but also instructors of techniques to build reading skills using materials that are relevant to their students. Participants in this program will review ideas about how to incorporate reading skill lessons into their curriculum so that they are enticing to struggling, reluctant, and disengaged learners.
Whether or not your school or district has adopted a Google Chromebook environment, if your LEA infrastructure allows for the use of Google Tools and/or Apps, the “Googlesphere” can be an immense help. It can aid in engaging students, keeping in touch with parents, automating feedback and assessment, sharing documents, and more. Hone your skills with the Google Chrome Browser, with Google Apps, with Android Apps, and with Chrome OS so that you can engage your students using freely available tools on almost any platform.
Elementary teachers may find that “fitting it all in” is impossible. Using informational text and technologies, elementary teachers will discover that not only is it possible to “fit it all in” it is fun! Examine the North Carolina Essential Standards and make connections to the North Carolina Standard Course of Study, ELA and Writing Standards. Investigate text sets and the role they play in integrating multiple contents. Create engaging cross-curricular instructional units with culminating projects for assessments.
This hands-on, minds-on seminar is designed to help teachers explore, evaluate, and apply blended models, structures, strategies, and tools to increase personalization in their classrooms. Throughout the week, participants will design a blended learning blueprint for their classrooms to assist with planning and implementing a personalized learning environment. Join us to learn how to leverage technology to meet each student’s needs in a blended classroom.
Today’s diverse students enter school eager to become successful in classrooms originally designed for culturally homogeneous populations and are expected to learn from teachers who are often not from the same cultural, ethnic/race or social-class. Unsurprisingly, student performance in reading and other subjects is often low while student dropout and teacher burnout rates are high. This program guides participants to explore and document their experiences in motivating at-risk students to become effective readers. In addition to sharing successful strategies for improving reading skills and producing a written narrative, participants will examine barriers children encounter along the pathway and how these barriers affected them. Additionally participants will become familiar with strategies they can use today to change the culture of the classroom to support the development of higher order thinking skills while enhancing self-motivation, personal responsibility, and perseverance to become skilled readers who excel academically.
