Teacher Professional Opportunities for Your School or District!
Are you looking for a partner to provide professional learning workshops or courses for your district, school, pre-service program, or organization? You're in luck! This is where our teacher professional development team does most of their work. Each program is collaboratively designed after consultation with you, to understand your learning priorities and needs! Click here for a description of our most popular programs.
The Three Mindsets of DMNS Instruction:
Based in research from mind and brain science about memory, motivation, and critical thinking:
- Cultivate Wonder - lead with curiosity
- Experience Before Expertise - engagement and mistakes are how we learn
- Co-construct Meaning - student and teacher collaboratively build cognitive frameworks
Our Three Wheelhouses of DMNS Professional Development
As a science & nature institution, we have three categories of professional learning experiences that we offer K-12 educators:
- Best Classroom Instructional Practices from Mind and Brain Science
- Best Practices in Inquiry-Based 3-Dimensional Science Instruction
- Best Practices to Cultivate Nature and Environmental Literacy
Click here for more information regarding our program offerings.
Hallmarks of DMNS Professional Development
In all workshops:
- Ratio: Lots of small group and pair work to model Experience Before Expertise; Courses are hands-on and minds-on
- Image rich exemplar video of classroom educators implementing with their students
- Humor and Hospitality: Professional learning can and should be fun
- Emphasis on equity and inclusion of all learners through specific strategies based in research
- Modeling rather than instructing: Use of gradual release and actual investigations to understand how phenomena are used to drive the instruction
In all science specific workshops:
- Use Phenomena Launch Routines to elicit student/teacher preconceptions and build a common base of experience needed for investigation
- Model how to use science and engineering practices to develop explanations and design solutions
- Integrate Literacy Strategies as part of investigation, not in place of investigation
- Model the use of Cross-Cutting Concepts as ways of thinking about phenomena and problems
Professional Development Logistics
Methods of Delivery:
- In person at your location
- In person at the Museum
- Virtual using online learning platforms
Expenses and Cost: programming ($275/hour) includes
- Program Development
- Delivery
- Materials for up to 40 teachers
Additional cost:
- Travel Expenses (mileage reimbursement, hotel, meals)
- Catering (at the Museum)
Our PD Development Process
- We meet with you to understand YOUR goals and YOUR priorities
- We develop a plan for PD and a MOU
- We tweak that according to your desires and sign it
- We deliver programming