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Our rigorous professional development program offers meaningful growth opportunities for all our staff—from experienced educators to new teachers. We know that growing and educating our teachers’ skill sets will have positive outcomes in student engagement and success.
Continual and collaborative professional learning
Leman Academy Professional Development (LAPD) initiative improves instructional practice with weekly opportunities to engage deeply in basic to advanced techniques aimed at developing confidence in teaching in a Classical Educational environment. The LAPD helps foster strategies to bring passion to every lesson, and collaborate on the design of highly targeted, actions. Leaders and teaching teams implement four types of LAPD meetings to ensure engaging and effective instruction.
The first of the LAPD meetings for each study unit focuses on the teachers’ intellectual content preparation—teasing out and amplifying the big ideas in upcoming units of study. The second meeting centers on the collaborative development of rigorous lesson plans; the third on interactive rounds of teacher practice, feedback, and improvement; and the fourth on formative reviews of student work to inform instruction and assessment design.
Individualized coaching
Teachers and leaders share coaching relationships that support individual growth in content, pedagogy, and culture. Regular classroom observations provide opportunities for real-time feedback, while coaching sessions focus on incremental improvement towards the attainment of larger goals.
Weekly, school-based professional development workshops
Once per week, at each campus, students are dismissed early and schools hold professional development workshops targeted toward improving school-wide practice. Workshops deliberately build key skills across practical, relevant topics such as culture, instruction, analysis of student work, and curriculum.
A menu of in person course offerings will be created and distributed to the teaching staff. Depending on budget capacity, substitute teachers will be brought in to facilitate job embedded training. Classes will be scheduled for morning and afternoons to allow the maximum number of teachers to participate while the substitute teachers on campus.
Network-wide sharing of best practices
LAPD’s academic and curricular teams work closely with school staff to improve and codify instructional planning and development, and to foster the sharing of effective lesson plans and best practices. Both leaders and teachers actively contribute ideas and feedback to ensure the continual improvement of the instructional program and curricular materials.
LAPD Leader Institute
The LAPD Leaders Institute is designed for the new Principal or Vice Principal with modules and one on one instruction designed to ensure that site based administrators are prepared and ready for the demands of school leadership.
The course of study includes instruction and Virtual Courses on the following topics:
Leadership 101
- Norms and Checklists
- Hiring and Training
- Community and Parents
- Data and Curriculum
- Culture – Communications – and Parents
- Theories and Leadership Articles – Best Practice
Leadership – Professional Development – Instructional Leader
- LoTi and H.E.A.T. tracking program
- LAPD Department Components
- Opportunity Culture.org
Leadership – Advanced
- Data Driven Instruction
- Board and Governance
- State Compliance
- Servant Leadership
- Facility Logistics
- Athletics and Clubs
- Legal Pitfalls
Life Group –
LAPD has implemented a peer to peer live video class that site based administrators attend twice per month. The format includes a book study, topic to discuss and a personal or professional goal that the members commit to the group on. We have found that these virtual meet ups allow for a greater peer to peer experience. The connections made help ensure that site administration realize that they are not alone in their challenges. Our goal is to educate, create relationships and build a safe container for leaders to share among peers.
We highly encourage and will help facilitate Life Groups that are led by a site Principal. The class format will remain the same and the enrollment is suggested to be voluntary.
Schools in America have evolved into complex operations with many moving parts. The role of the site Principal and Vice Principal continues to grow. Preparing the administration for what may be coming at them is an important aspect of a successful school.
Virtual Professional Development Library
The LAPD department has built out over 75 virtual LAPD classes which model beginning to advance professional development course. LAPD Course offerings are used to intentionally introduce new staff members to basic aspects of our culture and expectation. Once on board, the LAPD Course offering is used to specifically train a teacher on a theory or practical aspect of their profession. Our LAPD department will observe an issue or coachable moment, assign the corresponding LAPD Course assignment and then follow up with the teacher to ensure understanding and implementation. This course offering is growing at about 20-25 courses per year. Each course is organized and cataloged by skill type, grade and theory and practice. This deep and rich resource allows our system to remain consistent in multiple campuses in various cities.
A sampling of the courses offered includes:
- Relating with Parents
- Relational Discipline
- Beginning Narration
- Narration 2 and Narration 3
- Narration Live Demo
- Beginning Recitation
- Socratic Instruction - Intro, Level 1 and Level 2
- Classroom Transitions
- Understanding Leman Curriculum Drive
These resources are always open to teachers and will be assigned in the PD department or campus leadership believes there is an area that needs to be worked on.
The directors of each network curricular department regularly meet with school directors to observe program implementation, determine goals, identify targeted areas for improvement, provide professional development resources, and highlight areas of strength to share with other schools across the network.
Preparing for school opening
LAPD will host a 5 to 8-day orientation and in-service training program for our teachers and other staff in to kick off the LAPD program (typically at the beginning of the year). Teachers will work individually and in teams according to grade level, as well as with a group of teachers in order to align the curriculum, assessments, and standards across grade levels so that they teach a rich, coherent curriculum tied to state standards. The orientation will address the following topics:
- About LAPD and School Culture
- Mission, vision and core values
- How mission, vision and core values impact teachers and scholars every day
- Classical education
- Classroom environment
- Discipline approaches at LAPD
- Child development philosophy in the classroom
- Working with parents
- Fostering community
- Academics & Teaching
- Academic standards
- Academic excellence
- Planning and preparation
- Lesson implementation with outcomes aligned to standards
- Best teaching practices
- Curriculum
- Math
- English
- Curriculum maps
- Curriculum aligned to standards
- Data Driven Testing System (or training on the current testing system)
- Accessing reports
- Interpreting and implementing results in the classroom
- Differentiated Instruction
- Increasing H.E.A.T.! – Student engagement
- Assessments & Instruction
- Scholar assessment data
- Types of assessments
- Data collection, review and analysis
- Instructional decision-making based on data
- Differentiated instruction
- Instructional material/resources for differentiated instruction
- Setting goals in relation to scholar learning and the standards
- Establishing objectives related to standards
- Developing and implementing action plans
Master Teacher Program – OpportunityCulture.org
In LAPD will help implement a Master Teacher program outlined in OpportunityCulture.org. The OpportunityCulture.org program was underwritten by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Walton Fund among others. The Arizona’s Maricopa County Education Service Agency (MCESA) received a $60m grant to implement the program in three smaller districts and one charter. The driving mission of OpportunityCulture.org is to keep great teachers in the classroom but allow them to mentor other teachers at their grade level or at their school. The LAPD Master Teachers are paid an additional stipend and have a lighter teaching load. Each grade level has a Master Teacher whose responsibility it is to mentor their team, disseminate information, analyze and correct teaching techniques and integrate the data driven instruction protocols identified by the Administration and Professional Development staff.
There are grant opportunities to expand the OpportunityCulture.org program. The focus of the grant would include the ability to expand the role of Master Teacher by utilizing technology that would allow the top Master Teachers in the Leman network to mentor and coach all the teachers at a particular grade level. This technology would also allow for Master Teachers to lead virtual Socratic discussions all around the Country using a standard Google Hangout connection. The best teachers, mentoring and instructing at the highest level is the goals of the OpportunityCulture.org system. Typically the Master Teacher Program is rolled out in year two in order to identify and assess which teachers possess the skill set to handle the master teacher responsibilities. Experience has shown us that the most effective way to delineate and manage the LAPD Master Teacher Program is to identify and offer three different tracks for the Master Teachers. These tracks include:
- Team Lead – This candidate manages a grade or two and ensures consistency, communicates with administration and the on site LAPD staff. Their primary role is communication and consistency.
- Instructional Coach – This candidate functions as Team Lead as well as possess the skills to observe fellow teachers in a coaching capacity. The in classroom observation process is an important feedback tool for the teaching staff.
- Teacher Mentor – This candidate is put on point with one or more new teachers and acts as their mentor. The process is designed to be flexible to match the style of the mentor and mentee but include some goals and targets to make sure new teachers are welcomed and supported.
- Cross Observations – This program is coordinated between the on site administration and the LAPD department. Once per semester, the leadership team assigns a cross training day where a teacher that may be lacking a particular skill can observe and receive feedback from a peer that is stronger in the particular area of weakness. We’ve found that this program has been an important way to grow a teachers skill in a nurturing environment. Video instruction and post analysis is another technique that we have found to be effective.
LoTi Teacher Evaluation System
LAPD works closely with the LoTi, (Levels of Teaching Innovation), teacher evaluation and student engagement system. To successfully implement and track a training program, their needs to be common and measurable results based analysis. LoTi delivers consistency in teacher training, curriculum implementation and classroom observations become critical. The LoTi observation and tracking platform allows the LAPD Director the LAPD on campus staff, the Master Teachers and the site Administration to score and observe teaching staff. The scoring metrics is consistent and measurable and allows the LAPD department to identify issues and put in corrective actions.
LoTi was designed by Dr. Chris Moersch as a way to assess the most critical aspect of a scholar's education, a great teacher in the classroom. Dr. Moersch is the author of Beyond Hardware: Using Existing Technology to Promote Higher Level Thinking. Dr. Moersch has developed his program using the Danielson Rubric model which also incorporates a student engagement component known as H.E.A.T. (Higher order thinking, Engaged learning, Authentic connections, Technology use).
H.E.A.T is used as a lens to go beyond the lesson plan to what is actually happening with students. Many times the activities that the teacher plans do not result in the expected output from students. H.E.A.T. provides a common language to discuss and measure student output in a way that is tied to evidence-based practices.
LoTi involves teacher drop in assessments, real time and engaging feedback from the LAPD, staff and a quantifiable tool to gauge the H.E.A.T. student engagement. These tools and the feedback and re-training process gives our school network a common platform to assess the effectiveness of a teacher in the classroom. LAPD’s goal is to shift to deeper learning practices that work. LoTi builds a map for teachers, coaches, and leaders to create successful collaborative learning environments.