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At SPARK Academy, we believe that the best professional development for educators must be designed based on the individual needs of the teacher, must be meaningful, be ongoing, and be sustained in order for it to truly impact teaching and student learning.

One of the early missions of SPARK Academy was to be an innovative school, where students would continually challenged with developmentally-appropriate explorations in STEM. In order for that to occur in our classrooms, our faculty needs to be continually growing and learning as well. We have made keeping current in both training and technology a priority.

During our pilot year, three of our six teachers were fortunate to participate in intensive STEM training while attending Space Academy for Educators at US Space Camp. That week-long training led to in-house professional development, focusing primarily on the engineering design process and how to use it in a primary classroom. Since then, two more of our teachers have been able to attend the same program.

As we transitioned to a school-wide STEM school, we have had the opportunity for many different types of professional development: in-house training, visiting other STEM-focused schools, and attending regional and national conferences.

Members of our own faculty have been able to provide a lot of in-house professional development. The training for our school-wide use of Seesaw as a parent communication tool and student portfolio was all done in-house, as several members of our faculty were and are Seesaw Ambassadors. In 2017, we had school-wide professional learning leading up to the Great American Solar Eclipse, with information and activities, allowing our students to safely participate in the amazing event. Most recently, we have had the chance to learn and experience the engineering design process as a student during our faculty meeting focusing on group roles.

We have also been fortunate enough to have experts in mathematics, project based learning, and computer science come to our building for intensive, ongoing training. Over the past two years, we have had AMSTI math specialists on site, providing training for all of our grade level teachers. During the 2017-2018 school year, AMSTI worked with our third grade teachers on teaching place value and on a multiplication and division teaching progression. Last year, the math specialists returned and worked half days with our entire faculty on developing number talks, number sense, and creating counting collections.

Over the past three years, all of our teachers have been able to attend a three day training and then several follow up visits with PBL Works, formerly known as the Buck Institute for Education. During that training, our teachers were able to develop project or problem based units in their grade level teams and then reflect and receive critique from the PBL Works representative on the units they developed and taught. This training, along with the work we have done at both the school and district level has had a tremendous impact on how we explore content with our students.

Last year, SPARK was fortunate to host Dr. Jeff Gray for a day-long session on using Code.org resources in our classrooms. Half of our faculty was able to attend the training, with plans for the remainder of the faculty to attend the training on December 12 of this year.

During the 2017-2018 school year, SPARK Academy was fortunate to receive a grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission. A portion of the grant monies was used to visit established STEM schools around the state and attend regional and national conferences. During the 2017-2018 school year, all teachers in the building had the opportunity to visit at least two schools to see STEM “in action”. We were able to visit Talladega Elementary, WInfield Elementary, A.H. Watwood, and Trace Crossings, all in Alabama. In Tennessee, teachers visited Burris, Jack Anderson, and Union Elementary Schools. From those visits, each teacher was able to see and interact with teachers using STEM in their own grade level or teaching setting. The most important element of each trip was the time to debrief following the visit. Teachers were able to identify ways they could meaningfully incorporate STEM immediately into their classrooms. It also introduced us to a variety of resources and tools used by other schools so we could knowledgeably plan for future purchases and implementation. For example, observing how Dash robots were utilized in teaching grade level standards motivated SPARK faculty to purchase a classroom set of Dash robots for the SPARK Lab and for individual teachers to purchase one or two robots for use in their own classrooms.

Teachers have also had the opportunity to attend and present at both regional and national level conferences. One of our teachers attended and presented a session on using Seesaw in the classroom at the Future of Educational Technology in both 2018 and 2019. Another teacher co-presented two sessions at the national NSTA conference in Atlanta in 2018. Her sessions focused on using NASA educational materials in the classroom. Several of our teachers presented at our regional Ed Camp, held each winter. Our sessions have included presentations on using Seesaw, coding in the classroom, STEM-focused teaching, and project-based learning. Two of our kindergarten teachers were also invited to present at the Howell Graves professional development day on teaching STEM in the kindergarten classroom. Sixteen of our faculty members also attended national-level conferences: NSTA, NCTM, and ISTE, and nine of our teachers attended the STEAM by Design conference in Talladega.

Each year, our school level Instructional Leadership Team meets to determine our goals for professional development and craft those goals into our school's One Page Target. Our Instructional Leadership Team worked through the spring and summer of 2019 to establish our faculty goals moving forward. Our focus areas for the 2019-2020 school are Project Based Learning, Unit Planning, Assessment, and Community Connections as shown below.

As we reflect on our next steps as a faculty, we plan to continue focusing on the talents and expertise of our own faculty to continue to expand our knowledge of best practices in STEM education. Our focus this year will be to design powerful tasks for our units, based on the work of John Antonetti and facilitated by our instructional partner. We will also continue to provide just in time training in technology resources, like green screen and 3D printing, as teachers need it for their classroom instruction. We will continue to support teachers in ways to more effectively use Seesaw for parent communication. As the year continues to unfold, our plans for professional development will evolve along with the needs of our faculty.