Professional Development
This page curates a list of PD resources for educators in PreK-12. If you would like a PD facilitator at no cost to you in an Idaho region II school, please contact us!
Principles for High-Quality, Standards-Aligned Professional Learning (click to expand)
Principle 1: Professional learning must be content-focused. Professional learning builds teachers’ content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge necessary to teach the concepts of their discipline.
Principle 2: Professional learning must be teacher- and student-centered. Professional learning promotes collective responsibility for students’ learning and cultivates a dynamic culture for adult learning.
Principle 3: Professional learning must be instructionally relevant and actionable. Professional learning is anchored in the instructional priorities of teachers’ daily work and is sustained in a coherent system of collaborative planning, classroom practice, observation, feedback, and continuous cycles of inquiry grounded in evidence of student learning.
All three Principles need to be reflected for professional learning to impact instruction in a meaningful way.
Principles for High Quality, Standards-Aligned Professional Learning |K-12th| - Via Achieve The Core. Includes a five-page document outlining three foundational principles for effective PD, and one-page action lists for State Leaders, School Leaders, District Leaders, Coaches, and Teachers.
See also Effective Teacher Professional Development Report from Learning Policy Institute for a more in-depth treatise on effective PD.
Workshops are valuable and important, but they are also weak. Consistent, in-school, on-the-job learning that's closely related to what you are teaching works best. The best way to make improvements is over the shoulder of your students and shoulder to shoulder with your colleagues. This kind of culture is a necessary condition for effective professional development in schools.
PD Opportunities
Visit the IRMC2 & ICTM Facebook to find upcoming PD opportunities in Region 2. Contact us or click here to book a math support appointment at no cost to you. Also see our PD menu below.
Idaho State Department of Education Upcoming PD Schedule
Click the "Training & Events" Tab at the bottom of the Idaho SDE Math website to see a list of upcoming PD events from around the state.
Region 2 Math Support Menu
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Recent Workshops
Get in touch or book an appointment if you are interested in a workshop on these subjects -- we also create PD custom-tailored for your needs!
Mathematics Mindset Series |For K-12th educators/admin/coaches| - A series of 1-hour sessions designed to help educators reflect on their own mathematical mindset and empower them to strengthen both student mindsets and their own. Includes a focus on building procedural fluency on a foundation of conceptual understanding.
Research-Based Practices - What Impacts Student Achievement the Most? |For K-12th educators/admin/coaches| - A half-day content-focused workshop with discussion and exercises centered on the top three influences from Visible Learning research and. The workshop provides a lens for challenging deficit thinking and another lens for addressing unfinished learning while providing teachers with relevant, actionable, and memorable experiences focused on the work teachers are doing in their own classrooms with their students. Ties all of the concepts above together in discussions and activities that include the Idaho Content Standards for Mathematics, major work of the grade, practice and content standards, and effective assessment.
Math Discourse To Reach ALL Students |For K-12th educators/admin/coaches| - A shorter workshop (1-4 hours) that gives teachers an authentic math discourse experience, demonstrates how discourse can help students continue moving forward from whatever point they are at, and outlines how quality student discourse elevates most of the math teaching practices and many of the standards for mathematical practice. Based on the Five Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematics Discussions.
Your Curriculum, Your Learning Outcomes, & ICSM |For K-12th educators/admin/coaches| - Goals for this PD include identifying major, additional, and supporting standards for your courses; creating student learning outcomes based on the identified standards; and MTSS support/discussion.
Remediation Doesn't Work... So What Does? |For K-12th educators/admin/coaches| - A "choose your own adventure" variable-length PD workshop session that gives an overview of various unfinished learning research including the key concept of acceleration and optional extensions including: exposure to various frameworks for unfinished learning, Standards Walls (via "Learning in the Fast Lane"), challenging deficit thinking (via Rachel Lambert), and supporting grade transitions through strategic instruction and vertical alignment.
Using Quality Math Assessment Data to Inform Idaho Math Instruction and Intervention |For K-12th educators/admin/coaches| - A set of slides walking through principles of quality assessment, Idaho-defined MTSS types of assessment, how those assessments are related to ISAT data, and a brief discussion of formative assessment.
Discover What your Students Need Through ISAT Interims |For K-12th educators/admin/coaches| - PD that walks through Idaho State Content standards (practice AND content standards), the definition of formative assessment and what it looks like in the classroom, and an overview and picture tour (or live tour if possible) of the data and tools the ISAT can offer for interim assessments.
Connecting Assessment and Instruction |For K-12th educators/admin/coaches| - PD that walks through Idaho State Content standards (practice AND content standards), the definition of formative assessment and what it looks like in the classroom, and an overview and picture tour (or live tour) of the data and tools the ISAT can offer in addition to comprehensive assessments
PD/Coaching Frameworks
These frameworks provide excellent opportunities for facilitated PD experiences. Interested in implementing one of these? Get in touch!
See also Focused Observation Rubrics.
Jim Knight's Impact Cycle |For K-12th educators/admin/coaches| - My personal favorite framework. Emphasizes dialogical interactions. The cycle includes establishing a clear picture of reality; setting a student-focused goal based on change; selecting, learning, and implementing the strategy; and then making adaptions and adjustments. The link above includes free access to the resources in the Instructional Coach's Toolkit, including videos and templates. See also the High-Impact Instructional Toolkit.
Lesson Study |For K-12th admin/coaches| - A small group (3-6 teachers) PD framework that helps teachers focus on elevating a particular aspect of teaching through research, lesson planning, observation, and reflection cycles. Study tends to include horizontal and vertical standards alignment. Research tends to agree that lesson study is an impactful PD framework, and teachers often note how transformative it is to their practice.
lessonresearch.net Outlines the steps in the lesson study process, provides templates, and gives support for lesson study facilitators.
MQI Coaching |For K-12th coaches| - A Harvard-developed observational rubric that provides a framework for analyzing mathematics instruction in several domains. Within each of the five domains, individual codes contain score points that categorize instruction into different levels of quality. The MQI was developed in order to provide a both multidimensional and balanced view of mathematics instruction. This is a quality coaching tool.
AIM-TRU |For 6-12th educators/coaches| Includes a base slide deck and facilitation guide to use for PD and 8 MS/8 HS videos of quality formative assessment lessons (from the MARS project). "Each professional development session focuses on a formative assessment lesson with an associated video case of its use in the classroom. The sessions are carefully crafted to deepen teacher understanding of these lessons, how they support students in understanding big mathematical ideas, and how they align with a framework for powerful mathematics teaching, the Teaching for Robust Understanding (TRU) Framework." NSF-grant sponsored.
Equitable Teaching Practices in Math - |For K-12th educators/admin/coaches| - This document lists the proficiency tables for the Math Teaching Practices (MTPs) in NCTM’s Catalyzing Change in High School Mathematics (2018) and Principles to Actions (2014). Also provides some short guidelines for effective use of the document.
Mathematics Assessment Project |6th-12th educators/admin/coaches| via MARS - Provides an excellent overview of classroom challenges (ie, rich tasks focused on obtaining quality student data), 100 examples of lessons designed with formative assessment in mind, 94 quality summative assessment tasks, and 5 PD modules (self-paced) that encourage groups of teachers to explore the practical and pedagogical concepts behind the materials, such as formative assessment, collaborative learning and the use of unstructured problems.
