Modeled after programs that have been used successfully in other research, the TELS professional development program uses workshops and personal mentoring to help teachers:
Plan a project
Enact the project
Reflect on the instruction involved
Customize the project in light of these reflections
Enact the revised project
In the first year of the program, we hosted one workshop, met with teachers individually to help them launch their projects, provided further technical and classroom support as needed, and then conducted interviews about the instruction involved.
TELS teachers can participate by:
Benchmarking their students’ knowledge of the area they will teach and implementing at least one TELS project per year
To date, over 200 teachers have benchmarked and executed at least one project, over 25 teachers have joined curriculum design partnerships, and over 20 teachers have become lead teachers. About 25% of the teachers have run more than one project.
