Leonard Gelfand Center for Service Learning and Outreach

Teacher Professional Development

In partnership with the Pittsburgh Public Schools, Wilkinsburg School District, and River City Brass Band, the School of Music purchased a set of World Drums for twelve Schools and provided intensive in-service training for music teachers to be familiarized with a World Drumming Curriculum. A “hands-on” curriculum for middle school is being developed using World Drumming and Dalcroze Eurhythmics. Teachers participate in classroom management, lesson design and in addition the program includes coaching and performances by RCBB. This project was funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education, awarded in 2001 and renewed in 2002 for an additional two years. This grant is one of nine in the United States. Director: Natalie Ozeas; Consultants: Annabelle Joseph, Lewis Strouse, Stephen Neely, Riccardo Schulz, and Justin Bishop (student).

Contact:
Natalie L. Ozeas
(412) 268-2382
nlozeas+@andrew.cmu.edu

The Community Think Tank brings together teachers, administrators, students parents and community members in a structured, intercultural, problem-solving dialogue focused on workable options for action.

The Think Tank on Dealing with Learning Disability is developing in partnership with the Pittsburgh Public Schools’ Start on Success program (described in the Programs for Students section of this book.) SOS students, who have completed CMU Decision Makers, collaborate with CMU students in researching and representing the problems on which the Think Tank will focus. This program is the basis for half a semester intense project-learning course for Carnegie Mellon students.

Contact:
Dr. Linda Flower
(412) 441-5713
lf54@andrew.cmu.edu
www.cmu.edu/thinktank

Every spring semester, the Advanced Poetry Workshop at CMU mentors literary arts majors at CAPA (Pittsburgh High School for the Creative and Performing Arts), culminating in a public reading and publication of a book of the work created during the collaboration.

Contact:
Mr. Jim Daniels
412-268-2842
jd6s@andrew.cmu.edu

PSC also presents a program for high school science teachers in western Pennsylvania to prepare them to become leaders in the effective use of modeling and simulation tools in the classroom.

The Computation and Science for Teachers (CAST) program proposes to bring to the classroom the same problem-solving, technology-rich approaches currently used in scientific research and in business. Along with experimentation, computational tools such as modeling and simulation can be considered a new way of doing science to test a hypothesis. Often the analytical solutions provided by computational science help students to better understand the complex scientific concepts.

Contact:
Cheryl Begandy
Begandy@psc.edu
http://www.psc.edu/training/cast/

The Computer Science for High School (CS4HS) program at Carnegie Mellon is a 3-day summer workshop to disseminate curriculum modules that high school teachers (teaching primarily AP computer science and introductory programming courses) can implement in the classroom that provide students with an exposure to the versatility and applicability of the programming skills they have learned throughout the school year. Educators can use the modules from the workshop to show students that computer science is much more than computer programming.

Contact:
Tom Cortina
412-268-3514
tcortina@cs.cmu.edu
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/cs4hs/

Carnegie Mellon Institute for Talented Elementary Students has established a teacher professional development program for elementary and middle schoolteachers. In the last year, C-MITES has offered full-day workshops on Acceleration, Assessment of Mathematically Talented Students, and Curriculum for Mathematically Talented Students, Writing GIEPs: The Teacher’s Perspective, Ability Grouping: Helpful or Harmful?, and Developing Programs for Mathematically Talented Students. These workshops have been provided on the Carnegie Mellon campus in Pittsburgh and are also being held in Abington, PA. Call for the current professional development schedule.

Contact:
Ann Shoplik
(412) 268-1629
cmites@cmu.edu
http://www.cmu.edu/cmites/professional.html

The DASH professional development programs work to improve teaching about science, health and technology in kindergarten through sixth grade, and uses a teacher trainer model with practicing teachers certified to instruct others. Intensive institutes focus on content and skill knowledge from the disciplines along with classroom management strategies that make inquiry based learning more effective. Programs include summer institutes, school year follow-up services and support through newsletters, email, phone and school visits. Local teachers work as instructors in the program. Work has been ongoing since 1988, and more than 1,400 teachers have attended DASH Institutes coordinated by Carnegie Mellon. DASH curriculum materials were developed by the University of Hawaii.

Contact:
Judith Hallinen
(412) 268-1498
jh4p@andrew.cmu.edu

The purpose of the Professional Development Center is to improve the reflective practice of early childhood educators by 1) training educators to use clear objectives for children’s development as the basis for developmentally appropriate program and assessment, and 2) consulting with administrators and their staff members during the process of implementing new approaches. We design programs that equip individual educators or staffs to apply general principles in their unique contexts.

Contact:
Sharon Carver
(412) 268-1499
sc0e@andrew.cmu.edu
http://www.psy.cmu.edu/childrensschool

Secondary teachers of mathematics, science and technology are working with faculty at Carnegie Mellon to develop an online course, to help teachers and students learn about the ways in which science concepts are used by engineers in various areas of engineering. This program is funded by the Siemens Foundation. Carnegie Mellon students may participate in the delivery of information for this program; the design is not complete (as of July 2007).

Contact:
Judith Hallinen
412-268-1498
jh4p@andrew.cmu.edu

CS4HS is a new effort by the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University to reach out to high school (and K-8) teachers to provide resources to help them teach computer science principles to their students in a fun and relevant way. Our goals include helping teachers explain to students the exciting possibilities available to students who go on to study computer science in college.

Contact:
Tom Cortina, CS4HS Chair
Computer Science Department
tcortina@cs.cmu.edu
(412) 268-3514
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/cs4hs/index.html

FAST, named an Exemplary Science Program by the Expert Panel of the United Stated Department of Education, is a standards-based middle school curriculum available to schools through participation in a professional development program. Carnegie Mellon has been involved with the FAST program since 1990 and has coordinated teacher institutes for more than 100 local middle school teachers. The program employs a teacher instructor model with practicing teachers certified to instruct others. Curriculum materials were developed by the University of Hawaii.

Contact:
Judith Hallinen
(412) 268-1498
jh4p@andrew.cmu.edu

The IACBP, funded by National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Pittsburgh Digital Greenhouse, is an intensive in-residence summer program to help build Information Assurance education and research capacity at home institutions, specifically minority-serving universities, community colleges, and K-12 institutions. The program is organized in several sessions, offering both theorethical Information Assurance education, but also hands-on experiences through a bootcamp on security offered by CISCO. A specific session dedicated to the Curriculum Development in addition to competent assistance for how to meet the Center of Academic Excellence (CAE) requirements for Information Assurance Education, are guarantees of success for all the participating institutions.

Contact:
Dena Haritos Tsamitis
Carnegie Mellon CyLab
(412) 268-3297
http://www.cylab.cmu.edu/education/workforce_capacity.html

The U.S. Department of Education has awarded a three-year, $750,000 grant to researchers in the Department of Psychology to fund a project aimed at improving middle school science education. The goal of the project is to train teachers to apply cognitive models of scientific reasoning to their lesson plans in order to raise students’ performance on high-stakes standards tests. The principal investigators on the project are Psychology Professor David Klahr and postdoctoral fellow Junlei Li. The project will be conducted at the schools funded through the Extra Mile Education Foundation: Holy Rosary in Homewood; St. Agnes in Oakland; St. Benedict the Moor in the Hill District; and St. James in Wilkinsburg.

Contact:
Junlei Li
(412) 268-5707
junlei@andrew.cmu.edu

In 1999 the Pennsylvania Department of Education decided to pilot a set of Governor’s Institutes and Academies as professional development opportunities for K-12 teachers across the state. Carnegie Mellon hosted the pilot of an institute for physical science educators in 1999 and in 2000 was awarded a 3-year grant to continue the program.

The institute draws its organization from a film by Charles and Ray Eames entitled “The Powers of Ten” with subunits in astrophysics, materials, biopolymers, chemicals and mechanics. The underlying theme is teaching science through inquiry. Each subunit consists of a keynote lecture, hands-on activities and in some cases field trips to teach both science content and pedagogy. Exceptional K-12 faculty from across the state serve as mentors for the program while Carnegie Mellon faculty, primarily from the Mellon College of Science and the Carnegie Institute of Technology act as content experts and models of exceptional teaching practice.

The institute is a 2-week, residential program that fully utilizes Carnegie Mellon classroom, laboratory and computing facilities. The maximum enrollment is 50 teachers. During the past 5 years, the program has served 152 teachers from across the state.

Contact:
Karen Stump
(412) 268-2340
ks01@andrew.cmu.edu
http://www.cmu.edu/gipse/

During the past 6 years, The Grable Foundation has purchased 312 Yamaha Electric keyboards that CMU has placed in fifteen Pittsburgh Elementary Schools. In addition, Carnegie Mellon has provided materials and teacher in-service training. During the past year, the initiative has expanded to include a middle and two high schools. This grant exceeds $100,000. Director, Natalie Ozeas; Consultant, Hanna Li

Contact:
Natalie Ozeas
412-268-2382
nlozeas@andrew.cmu.edu

Carnegie Mellon, Chatham College, and the Pittsburgh Public Schools jointly received a grant from the DeWitt Wallace-Reader’s Digest Foundation with which to found the Pittsburgh Teachers Institute. The Institute replicates the 20-year-old model developed by Yale University and the New Haven Public Schools, in which the university offers academic seminars to school teachers. The teachers suggest the topics, and those who participate, Institute Fellows, are treated as members of the university community. Fellows prepare a curriculum unit that draws on the content of the seminar; they then use this unit in their teaching in the next academic year. The Institute makes these units available to other teachers in the district, so that the units will have the widest possible impact in the district. Dr. Helen S. Faison, the former Chair of the Education Dept at Chatham College and the first Director of the Institute, returned to the position of Director in August, 2000 after having been on leave during the 1999-2000 academic year to serve as the interim Superintendent of the Pittsburgh Public Schools.

Contact:
Judith Hallinen
(412) 268-1498
jh4p@andrew.cmu.edu
http://www.chatham.edu/pti/

This project has provided sets of world drums to all schools. Teachers and CMU students have received training in drumming and the world drumming curriculum. Dalcroze Eurhythmics and Rap are important parts of the enrichment curriculum that has been developed. The Urban Music Education course is offered each semester through the School of Music to 18 schools and 22 teachers.

Contact:
Dr. Natalie Ozeas
412-268-2382
nlozeas@andrew.cmu.edu

Since 1997, The Program for Collaborative Learning has offered a series of professional development opportunities to support the early childhood educators understanding of the philosophy and principles of the Reggio Emilia approach. In addition, the mission of the PCL is to enhance quality and promote life long learning for early childhood educators, administrators, art educators, architects, designers and those who are interested in the early childhood profession. As part of the Cyert Center for Early Education, the PCL is a vehicle for sharing the work that takes place within the school community. The 2003-2004 Professional Development calendar includes a series of three evening workshops and two visitation days to the Cyert Center.

Contact:
Judy Abrams
(412) 268-5470
jabrams@andrew.cmu.edu
http://www.cmu.edu/cyert-center/

Project LISTEN (Literacy Innovation that Speech Technology Enables) is an inter-disciplinary research project at Carnegie Mellon University to develop a novel tool to improve literacy; an automated Reading Tutor that displays stories on a computer screen, and listens to children read aloud. To provide a pleasant, authentic experience in assisted reading, the Reading Tutor lets the child choose from a menu of high-interest stories from Weekly Reader and other sources including user-authored stories. The Reading Tutor adapts Carnegie Mellon’s Sphinx-II speech recognizer to analyze the student’s oral reading and intervenes when the reader makes mistakes, gets stuck, clicks for help, or is likely to encounter difficulty. The Reading Tutor responds with assistance modeled in part after expert reading teachers, but adapted to the capabilities and limitations of the technology. The current version runs under Windows (TM) 2000 on an ordinary Pentium (TM) with at least 128MB of memory. In 2002-2003, hundreds of students are using the Reading Tutor at 9 schools.

Contact:
Jack Mostow
(412) 268-1330
mostow@cs.cmu.edu
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~listen/

This joint program of Carnegie Mellon and Johns Hopkins University provides group instruction and laboratory research experiences for science, technology and mathematics teachers through a partnership between the university and local school districts. The work encourages researchers to build partnerships with teachers that can bridge to their students. Carnegie Mellon provides support to the teachers during the academic year to translate the “lessons learned” during the five-week summer program into classroom enhancements that will energize their students and help them learn about careers in scientific research.

Contact:
Judith Hallinen
(412) 268-1498
jh4p@andrew.cmu.edu

This is an arts-based robotics workshops for students, families, and groups. With over 250 community participants per year, the Robot 250 program is available to elementary, middle, and high school students, with some adult participants as well.

Contact:
Mr. Dennis Bateman
412-268-5767
dbateman@cs.cmu.edu
www.robot250.org

Teacher education programs typically include professional development and equipment loaned to the teacher’s school so that the teacher’s class may participate in the robotics competitions coordinated by the Robotics Academy. Other professional development activities include long-term internship experiences and tours of the National Robotics Engineering Consortium.

Contact:
Robin Shoop
(412) 681-7160
roboed@rec.ri.cmu.edu
http://www.rec.ri.cmu.edu/education/index.html

Working with representatives from the Robotics Foundry, Carnegie Mellon facilitates the placement of teachers in local robotics industry sites for three-week internship experiences. The goal is to provide the teachers with up-to-date career information and an increased understanding of the day-to-day work in a robotics oriented company. School-year programs are designed to prepare the teachers for the most productive use of the summer experience.

Contact:
Judith Hallinen
(412) 268-1498
jh4p@andrew.cmu.edu

The Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Science Van Program for middle schools (grades 5-9) was established in March 1998 by Visiting Professor Garry F. P. Warnock. The program has gained an outstanding reputation for bringing hands-on science workshops and science assemblies to students and teachers in grades 5-9 in western Pennsylvania. The success of the CMU Science Van Program is due to the expertise, diligence, persistence, and love of teaching possessed by Dr. Warnock and the educators (Van Guys) who have worked with him over the years.

The Van Program offers workshops for science teachers in grades 5-9. These workshops, held on Saturday mornings during the academic year, offer middle school science teachers the opportunity to learn about and do the various demonstrations and experiments the Van Guys do. The Saturday workshops give teachers a chance to exchange ideas with their colleagues on how to implement what they learn in the classroom. The teachers leave with a kit of equipment and printed information to help them carry out demos in their school. Workshop topics have included: electricity and magnetism, biology, polymers, geology, and light and color.

Contact:
Garry Warnock
(412) 268-4229
warnock@andrew.cmu.edu
http://www.cmu.edu/mcs/van-outreach/

The five-day TeacherTech Institute builds technology skills for teachers to integrate technology into the science curriculum. The program focuses on the effective use of technology currently available in the Pittsburgh Public Schools: Excel, Inspiration and Probware used with CBLs and CBRs and web-based activities. Leaders model the process used to develop classroom technology supported activities to enhance the curriculum. MS technology supported activities are directly related to adopted instructional materials. Participants develop their own skills, and are required to design activities that will be used to enhance their classroom teaching during the school year. Reflective discussions are incorporated to help participants understand the technology, content and equity related classroom strategies that are being modeled by the workshop instructors. Lunch sessions include presentations from various speakers who focus on specific career areas related to technology and the educational path that led them to success in their chosen field, including women and minority leaders in the fields. Teacher participants in the institute commit to facilitating professional development sessions throughout the year.

Contact:
Cheryl Begandy
(412) 268-5129
begandy@psc.edu
http://www.psc.edu/training/teachertech/index.html