As the board member for National Primary Religious Education centers, I am working to develop a learning and development program to support the 750+ teachers and 350+ support staff members, including instructional coaches, teacher educators, principals, heads of instruction, and more. This program will have multiple learning pathways divided into induction learning pathways for new stakeholders and continuing education learning pathways for those already in the field. Each pathway will be led by a different National Project Manager. Currently, two pathways are being actively developed- the New Teacher Induction Pathway and the Educational Leader Learning Pathway.  

Learning and Development - May 2024 Update 

I am working to develop and finalize a Professional Learning Library, a database of presentations on significant topics that our department can use. This aims to ensure that all presentations coming out of our office are consistent in messaging and that all presentations are engaging, interactive, and informative for the adult learner. As part of this project, I developed a facilitator guide that we use for each presentation; this will allow us to ensure uniformity among all the presentations and will allow individuals who pick up this presentation to implement it with fidelity. 

The facilitator guide template can be accessed here: Facilitator Guide Template

Example: Co-Teaching 101 Facilitator Guide

Example: Accommodating Diverse Learners Facilitator Guide

Based on staffing changes, I updated the previous year's induction plan to support new special education teachers. With the success of the productive professional learnings the previous year, we wanted to keep that format but wanted to make it easier to understand for local schools. So we rebranded all the days as part of the larger induction process and called it Induction Days 1-4. I also wanted to be very intentional in the takeaways that teachers were leaving the sessions with, so the plan includes specific deliverables for each day.

New Special Education Teacher Induction Plan - 2024

I am leading a team that is creating a professional learning library. The purpose of this library is to create base presentations of the commonly requested topics by our department of special education. This will allow for consistent messaging so that no matter who is conducting the presentation, the messaging and content coming out of the department will be consistent. Additionally, this will allow for the professional learning coming out of our department to be of the highest quality so that the presentations are engaging and interactive for adult learners. 

All presentations are using the following facilitator guide template: Facilitator Guide Template

I developed this induction plan to support new special education teachers beyond just the first year in the classroom. We also had a larger staff allotment, and we wanted to leverage that staff to support our new teachers. This plan included support for teachers for up to 3 years. It also involved a set of Productive Professional Learning sessions, which were day-long opportunities for teachers to receive professional learning on a specific topic and then spend the remainder of the day working with instructional coaches, specialists, and mentors on tasks related to their learning for the day.  

New Special Education Teacher Induction Plan - 2023