Staff Developers

Many of us are willing to work in classrooms co-teaching, planning, and reflecting with small groups. We do not, however, believe in doing demo lessons. The use of demo lessons for professional development is based on modeling and feedback-ideas that stem from behaviorism. We do not know the children, and real teaching comes from knowing the children well. On the other hand, we have knowledge of development and pedagogy and of course we know well the curriculum we wrote! This means we are all players in a community. We are a team of equals. Instead of doing demo lessons, we co-teach and co-plan with teachers and then use this experience for discussion. We develop collaborative communities of learning-teachers who are reading and studying, trying things out, working collaboratively with their peers, and would enjoy the experience of doing that with us as a part of the discussion as well.