PD Your Way: An Inexpensive & Powerful PD Opportunity

Hello, my name is Michael Gorman. I have been a part of education for nearly 45 years providing classroom and district level leadership, along with profession development across the nation. Topics include STEM, PBL, Blended Learning, and Transformational Practices and places range from Boston to Miami to San Francisco, and so many other places in between. I have learned that assisting teachers with best practice based on action-based deliverables provides the best outcomes for student success. PD must be meaningful and ongoing, allow for immediate delivery to students, provide access to resources, and be practical. Most of all, it should not have to be expensive.

With this in mind,  I would like to welcome you to PD Your Way from Keep Indiana Learning, a professional development program that provides educators with inexpensive ($5 per course), relevant, and productive resources, tools, and training with flexible timing based on educators’ needs. It even provides 8 PGPs (Professional Growth Points) along with a Certificate of Completion to add to a portfolio for each course.  Sign up for one course or for all 17, and  we keep adding more! These courses are all self-paced, online, and the dates are built around each individual participant’s schedule. PD Your Way is designed to fit the needs of busy educators; one can start and continue courses anytime during the open period. The courses have been designed to crosswalk with any school or district initiative. You will find courses such as STEM is a Verb, facilitating STEM concepts in all curricular areas, and Investigating PBL Gold Standards, allowing teachers to bring the PBL Gold Standards to their classroom or lessons before even taking that big step into creating a project. There are also courses that provide tools and protocols such as Design Thinking (across every subject area), Making Thinking Visible (metacognition and reflection practice from Harvard’s Project Zero), Question Formation Technique (student owned inquiry from the Right Question Institute), 5E Lessons (transforming every lesson in every subject), or PBS LearningMedia (a free program worth thousands of dollars). Perhaps you are interested in support for educators’ and students’ emotional needs which can be found in the courses Teacher Advocacy and Strategies for Student Success. Keep in mind there are many not mentioned here.  All courses are designed so that concepts learned, and resources introduced, can be applied the next day in any school setting. Participants will discover ways to support many of these concepts through  face to face, eLearning, and blended learning. All courses are current and cutting edge and facilitators represent years of experience across a wide range of school curricula and grade levels.

Teacher sign-up is easy. Individuals just go to the link ( https://courses.keepindianalearning.org/  ) and register. The cost for each course is almost free, just five dollars. While each course is worth so much more than this, the program has been funded through the Olin B. and Desta Schwab Foundation in Fort Wayne, Indiana and developed for the Region 8 Education Service Center in Fort Wayne, and the Central Indiana Education Service Center in Indianapolis specifically for educators everywhere.  It is our unique way of putting educators first. Join us at Keep Indiana Learning’s PD Your Way and become a member of an amazing Learning Community! For more information, or if you have ideas for a new course you would like to see us develop contact me (Michael Gorman: mjgormans@gmail.com ) or the amazing people at Keep Indiana Learning. Join us in tomorrow’s PD, today!  …. Mike