With an intense focus on student achievement, the Curriculum and Digital Learning department created IMPACT professional development for content area teachers.
This innovative professional development garnered the attention of Learning Forward Florida who honored the CDL team with the 2020 Outstanding Professional Learning Practices Award.
The Instructional Mastery of Pedagogy and Curriculum Training provides English Language Arts, math, reading, science and social studies teachers front-loading professional development. This approach is different from prior professional developments that primarily focused on subject-based pedagogy.
More than 800 teacher participants explored how to adapt the Curriculum Resource Materials for teacher led instruction, and collaborative, differentiated and independent learning. As a cohort they created action plans to help reflect upon and implement what they learned, focusing on important concepts, barriers and next steps.
“We were impressed with the work the team did to create year-long job-embedded professional learning with digital tools to improve standards-based instruction. As the nomination application outlines, your program was able to impact teachers’ content-specific knowledge and pedagogical practices, as well as student engagement,” Alyson Adams, Learning Forward Florida Awards Committee chair wrote in the recognition letter. “Teachers in your program reported that they shared their knowledge and skills with other teachers within their professional learning communities.”
For the 2020-21 academic year, IMPACT moved to an online platform and has 2,000 participants registered across the content areas.
“It was very rewarding that the IMPACT series was recognized. It is a true example of professional development designed with the classroom teacher in mind. My team thoroughly enjoys partnering with classroom teachers to support their content knowledge and pedagogy. This was also a great venue for classroom teachers to share best practices with each other ,” Rob Bixler, Associate Superintendent of Curriculum and Digital Learning, said.
Bixler accepted the award in a virtual awards ceremony Sept. 22.