Teachers Working with Teachers: School Districts (Part 3)
Occasionally, school systems cultivate both professional development across their districts and school-based learning communities focused on instructional improvement. In Pittsburgh (PA) in the early 1980s, for example, Superintendent Richard Wallace closed a high school with low test scores and declining enrollment and re-opened it as a magnet school for students and training center for the district’s high school teachers.
Between 1983-1989, the teacher center brought nearly one thousand teachers in 11 other district high schools to the training center to spend eight weeks learning the Madeline Hunter approach to lessons, content knowledge in their discipline, and ways to improve their teaching through seminars, observations of master teachers, and conferences. After eight weeks, teachers returned to their high school assignments. Evaluations posted high teacher satisfaction with the experience, difficulties after they returned to their classrooms, and gains in student test scores. [i]
Between the late-1980s and mid-1990s, New York City Community district 2 under the leadership of
Between 1983-1989, the teacher center brought nearly one thousand teachers in 11 other district high schools to the training center to spend eight weeks learning the Madeline Hunter approach to lessons, content knowledge in their discipline, and ways to improve their teaching through seminars, observations of master teachers, and conferences. After eight weeks, teachers returned to their high school assignments. Evaluations posted high teacher satisfaction with the experience, difficulties after they returned to their classrooms, and gains in student test scores. [i]
Between the late-1980s and mid-1990s, New York City Community district 2 under the leadership of