CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT WORKSHOPS Contact: Irwin Goldstein, (718) 982-2333.

The Discovery Institute's curriculum development workshops provide teachers with an open environment where they formulate and shape their own techniques and ideas; our teachers become active participants in the development of their own teaching, and cultivate a professional pride that translates into classroom activities that not only motivate their students, but create a symbiotic cycle of inspirational energy, growth, learning and achievement.

The Discovery Institute fosters this cycle by bringing teachers together in groups representing each major academic discipline, such as English, social studies, mathematics, and the sciences. Each group of teachers begins work with the support of Institute facilitators, experienced teachers who have spent time working within the Institute's discovery methodology. The groups meet regularly after school hours and in intensive summer sessions, where teachers develop professional recognition among one another, share their classroom successes and challenges, think collectively, and ultimately write lessons that will achieve individual and communal goals within state requirements.

Throughout the process, Institute personnel provide subject-area resources, but never dictate any internal elements of the lesson plans. The plans are produced exclusively by the teachers who will use them, evincing the Institute's fundamental procedural axiom that teachers be treated as empowered and capable professionals. As a result, the lessons are filled with the insight and enthusiasm that comes only when individuals are permitted a sense of creation and ownership within their professional communities. The essential value of these lesson plans lies in their exhibition of teacher-agency; the Discovery Institute maintains that no institution, no matter its credentials, can impact or inform a teacher's own classroom instruction better than his or her own intellectual or procedural discoveries while thinking and writing with his or her peers.

Workshop Schedule Fall, 2004: February - December Group Day High School math, science, and non-core disciplines Tuesdays, 3:30 - 6:30pm High School social studies and English Thursdays, 3:30 - 6:30pm Techniques of Writing -Not Offered Fall '04- Intermediate Schools: Gear Up Wednesdays, 2:30 - 6:30pm Intermediate School research projects Fall '04 schedule TBA Facilitators' Meetings 3:30 - 5:30pm, 1A 308 9/21, 9/22, 9/28, 9/29, 10/25, 11/22, 12/13, 1/5/05, 1/6/05, 1/11/05, 1/12/05, 1/13/05

Click here to view samples of our teachers' lesson plans.