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Lesson Plans


Professional Development

[ Thread ][ Subject ][ Author ][ Date ]
PGStephens
Fri, 10 Sep 1999 19:35:05 EDT

As an associate editor for "Trends: the Journal of the Texas Art Education
Association," I am interested in researching and writing an article for our
publication about the types of professional development opportunities that
are being provided to art teachers around our state as well as across the
United States. This article will also deal with teacher perception about the
quality of professional development activities.

For those of you who wish to respond, please consider the following framework
of eleven characteristics for quality staff development.

Think about the professional development that you were offered during the
past few years and at the beginning of this school year. You need not
respond to each and every characteristic, but you might use these as an
overall scale to rate how your staff development stacks up against these
points.

If you wish to comment about how your school or school district has met or
failed to meet any of the points, your comments are welcome. Any comments
you have about how to improve professional development activities are also
welcome.

This message is being sent to several lists. I will be glad to share the
results with this group.

1. Advocate the visual arts as meaningful and important to the general
curriculum

2. Instigate intellectual curiosity of teachers

3. Show connections to real-world situations and applications

4. Go beyond "Make and Take" sessions

5. Provide tools for strengthening instructional skills of teachers

6. Promote collaborations among peers, mentors, the art community, and the
community-at-large

7. Align with local, state, and national content standards and learning
objectives

8. Encourage cultural diversity

9. Deepen the personal knowledge base of teachers

10. Contribute to ongoing inservice training

11. Be content relevant

Regards from Texas,
Pam Stephens
Project Coordinator
North Texas Institute for Educators on the Visual Arts
University of North Texas
P.O. Box 305100
Denton, Texas 76023-5100
940.565.4402
pstephens