THE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF TEACHERS

The Discovery Institute's ultimate goal is to improve students' academic achievement. However, because students spend most of their educational lives (more than 1000 hours annually) in classrooms with teachers, the Institute seeks to improve academic achievement primarily through the improvement of teaching. Thus, its resources are mainly devoted to the professional development of teachers.

The Institute's fundamental approach to teachers' professional development derives directly from its overarching discovery philosophy. Just as it expects students to take responsibility for their own learning, it expects teachers to take responsibility for their own teaching. The responsibility for professional development rests squarely on the shoulders of the teachers themselves, rather than on a specialized group of "professional developers" who tell them what to do. In keeping with this philosophy, all Discovery Institute professional development efforts provide teachers with an open environment that expects and demands that they take charge of their own curriculum.

This process is implemented through a system of curriculum development teams that represent each major academic subject. The teams meet at the College of Staten Island in weekly workshops after school hours as well as in intensive summer sessions. Each team reviews the state-mandated curriculum for each academic subject and decides upon an overarching, interdisciplinary theme for the term's work. Under the umbrella of this theme, each team member then develops discovery-based classroom activities for her or his academic discipline, which also implement state learning standards and develop basic skills. Team members share, discuss, and critique their lesson plans with one another, try them out in their classrooms, change and refine them as necessary, and then incorporate the entire package into a "manual" that is published in-house for the team's use.

Throughout this planning process, the Discovery Institute's master teacher "facilitators" act as resources for the teams, but they never dictate. The lesson plans are produced by the teams alone. Results over the years have firmly established that when teachers are treated with professional respect and encouraged to take control of their own curricula, they overwhelmingly respond with great enthusiasm and act as true professionals. This is an absolutely fundamental Discovery Institute axiom. In fact, the Institute believes that teacher empowerment is the single most important key to educational reform.