As part of my capstone project for TREC Teacher Leader Cohort 5, I set out to implement and analyze the effectiveness of year-long, community-building professional development cohorts for early childhood educators in the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD). What materialized over the course of the school year was a dynamic, multi-pathway model designed to…
My goal with this post is to (1) model transparency, (2) empower thoughtful Artificial Intelligence (AI) use, (3) and make AI feel approachable — not intimidating — for educators. To start, I keep pedagogy first, not tools first. AI is not my teaching plan, my instructional design, or my professional judgment. Instead, it is…
Embrace the Concepts of Improv to Build Community, Spark Student Curiosity, and Improve Instructional Planning Live and local comedy performances come in a variety of forms — some are structured like scripted plays, others focus on joke-telling through “stand up sets”, and some center techniques based on improvisation.For this third category of performances —…
Enhancing the knowledge of peers is not only exciting and rewarding — it can also be overwhelming. In this blog post, you’ll find proven practices to better equip you for working with adult learners generally and teachers specifically. Included below are checklists for facilitators to plan their professional development (PD) session and to coordinate…
Three Ways to Bring Voice and Choice to Adult Learning Research from Edward Deci and Richard Ryan shows that autonomy is one of the three core drivers of human motivation. When adults have a sense of choice and control in their learning, their engagement and follow-through increase dramatically. Earlier this year, TREC invited me to…
Unlocking the Full Potential of Your Teaching Abilities By: Anamika Sood Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Anamika Sood, and I have dedicated 24 years to the field of education. I came from India and embarked on a journey to the United States in 2018 as an international teacher. Before this, I spent…
Take Your Shot By: Shay Humphreys Monitor and adjust. Teachers hear this all the time — and we are masters at it. We do it daily, hourly, by the minute. Sometimes we do it without even realizing. The fortunate part of our work is that when we have an off day or a lesson doesn’t…
Roots & Marigolds: My International Teaching Odyssey By: Cerelo Villagracia Flores, Ph.D. It might surprise you that many of the teachers in the United States are not American citizens; like myself, international teachers abound in the country of the Star Spangled Banner. This became a reality in 1961 when the Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange…
