June 2009 Newsletter
Thanks For Another Successful Year
It’s been another successful year at the good ‘ol Teacher Center. We’ve run some very successful events with the help of BOCES, St. Bonaventure, and the teachers who suggested the events. I’d like to especially thank Jenn Larson from Cuba with her suggestions for speech pathology workshops. The speech people of the area have been very grateful for the events that we were able to bring down here. I’d like to continue to help them and to help other groups, so if you would like to see workshops designed for a particular group, please let me know.
Here are some workshop surveys for 08-09:
John DeMado LOTE workshop, Oct. 16
Susan Cochrane – Speech pathology – Oct. 17
Soaring Stories, Oct. 24
Delicious/Thinkfinity training w/Tim Houseknecht
Speech workshop, March 20
John DeMado #2 LOTE workshop, March 31
Great New Grant Opportunity for 2009-10:
Teacher As Leader Workshops
Our board just approved a new grant idea for 2009-10 called the Teacher as Leader program. We’ve been trying to think of ways to decentralize our workshops and offer more things based on the wide geographic area we serve, and we think we’ve found a reasonable way to address this. We want to allow teachers to have the opportunity to share their knowledge with their colleagues from their district or any neighboring districts.
This grant program is another collaborative effort with BOCES because your district can take advantage of coser 529 – Effective Schools for reimbursement of any stipend you may get to attend an after school workshop. Teacher stipends are of course a local decision, but our good friends at BOCES have OK’d this for this grant. The result is that the workshop presenter will be paid through the Teacher Center grant and attendees will be paid or otherwise given local inservice credit based on their district’s policy.
Workshops can be on any professional development topic deemed appropriate by the district level team. The Teacher Center will help to promote the workshop. This can encourage attendance from neighboring districts. It could also help to stimulate others to run similar workshops in their districts.
Why this type of grant?
The purpose of this new grant will be to allow teachers in our two-county membership area to lead workshops after school, weekdays, or staff development days. They will develop the workshop, get it approved locally (and ultimately by the Teacher Center), and get reimbursed for their work from the Teacher Center.
Workshops can be on any professional development topic deemed appropriate by the district level team. The Teacher Center will help to promote the workshop. This can encourage attendance from neighboring districts. It could also help to stimulate others to run similar workshops in their districts.
Specifics of the grant program:
- Teacher develops an idea for a locally based workshop and submits the idea to their local PD team or other appropriate district level people or teams.
- District gathers the workshop ideas and submits them to the Teacher Center for final approval.
- Teacher Center reviews the grant proposals submitted by the district. Deadline for 2009-10 applications: September 30, 2009
- Total grant award for each district of $2,500. If a district does not apply for $2500 in total Teacher as Leader grants by September 30, the remaining money can be used for other districts to increase their level. Note: The TC reserves the right to extend the deadline if needed because of time constraints.
- Teacher instructors will be paid $35 per workshop hour by the Teacher Center. Up to 2 hours of prep time at $35 per hour will be allowed for the first occurrence of the workshop. Other prep time pay will at the discretion of the district team.
- Workshop material costs (books, DVD’s, misc. materials) can be included as part of the total $2500 package.
- Districts that allow payments for workshop attendance and that use the BOCES coser 529-Effective Schools will be reimbursed for teacher stipends for time that is beyond teacher contracts. Check with your district on this point.
If you are interested, please download the form here:
SCHOOL-NAME-teacher as leader app
If I’ve missed anything, please let me know and I’ll make changes. This form will also be available on our Downloads page with our other grant forms.
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Interactive Whiteboard Camp at Cuba Rushford
The Program
This camp offers interaction with teachers on both basic and advanced uses of Promethean equipment and software. There will be a “100 level” group in the MSHS computer lab and a “200 level” group in the MSHS Library Computer Area. The 100 level will be appropriate for new users. The 200 level will be appropriate for teachers that have experience with a board.
Teachers will experience “hands-on” learning. The day will have instructional session(s) with work out time to build your own flipcharts. See Interactive White Board User Camp Schedule on back or below for details. You may choose to work and learn on your own, or in small groups at camp.
Sessions will be facilitated by teachers that will be available as we all create flip charts for our 2009-2010 school year during our work out time.
Schedule
Camp will be held Aug. 10th through Aug 13th starting at 8:30 AM ending at noon daily. The location will be the Cuba-Rushford Middle High School. Attendees need to provide their own transportation.
Coordinator
Jay Morris, CRCS Technology Integration Specialist. Any questions about class content and/or instruction may be directed to him at 585-808-3603 or via email at jmorris@crcs.wnyric.org For a information poster, click here.
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Delicious and Thinkfinity Grants A Big Success
This year, we awarded 16 minigrants where people used Delicious online bookmarks with other online tools such as Thinkfinity (www.thinkfinity.org). The people who are using Delicious absolutely love it for keeping track of sites because it allows them to access their bookmarks from anywhere. They can share their bookmark sites with their students and edit them from home. If you’d like to see what the fuss is all about, please contact me.
Click here for a survey about Delicious.
Click on the Delicious/Thinkfinity grant form here: Delicious/Thinkfinity grant
Our grant forms are all available on our downloads page, and you can start applying now for 2009-10. To access the grant form, please click here. If you have an idea for quality professional development, it probably fits within our rules, so go for it!
Once again, thanks for a successful year. Remember that the Teacher Center grant is only succcessful with input from you, our valuable teachers. Thanks for having faith in me to run this program for you.
Tim Houseknecht, Director
