Professional Development

  1. Conduct professional development workshops and keynote presentations for teachers
  2. Conduct demonstration lessons in classrooms and other school contexts
  3. Coach individual teachers and teacher teams
  4. Support implementation and innovation
  5. Observe instruction and provide non-judgmental feedback
  6. Conduct workshops and support for parents
  7. Conduct strategic planning assistance for Board of Education members and school stakeholders
  8. Facilitate professional development and organizational planning
  9. Facilitate troubleshooting/problem solving for classroom and school issues
  10. Train trainers, facilitators, and instructional coaches
  11. Coach administrative and teacher leaders
  12. Evaluate the impact of professional development
  13. Conduct workshops and provide support for paraprofessionals and clerical staff
  14. Conduct student instruction related to school improvement goals and student needs

Twelve Professional Development Programs to Increase Student Achievement, Reduce Achievement Gaps, and Improve Our Professional Expertise

Match teaching and leadership professional development needs and student learning needs to practical, engaging, and relevant professional learning experiences.  Choose from programs below or work with Bobb Darnell to customize programs for your school/district/ organization.  The sessions below can be adapted to various time frames from 75 minutes to full-day sessions.

Expand your “everything”. Bring back energy, passion, and positive attitude back to students who are struggling. Become more aware of over 130 practices that will ignite improved student achievement and bring failing students the joy of success in school. Learn how to unleash the power of struggling and disinterested learners and see how to motivate students to become engaged, empowered, and ready to achieve high standards. Leave this session with a pyramid of interventions.
Discover an instructional design framework intended to get, keep, and use the attention of today’s hands-on, minds-on, and interactive students. Become familiar with ways to create a learning environment where curiosity, challenge, and achievement thrive. Experience a variety of fast-paced whole class, small group, and individual practices that can inspire 100% engagement with just the right amount of challenge at the right pace. See how you can teach students how to WIN at school.
Imagine teaching and assigning tasks where “no one gets lost and no one gets bored.” Discover seven things you can do to inspire engagement, with just the right amount of challenge, and at the right pace. Learn how you can use instruction and assessment that gives the illusion of speed and maintains attention from beginning to end. Discover powerful strategies that accelerate students’ ability to retain, transfer, and apply content material. See how to help students feel that they are learning and that the class is moving at “just the right speed.”
Use a self-assessment tool to determine if your PLC is really ready to increase student achievement and collaborate with enthusiasm and high intention. Learn how high functioning PLCs establish group process expectations and how leaders address group challenges. Take away practical tips to examine student work, establish improvement goals, and take decisive actions without wasting precious time. Discover how to reflect about, recognize, and celebrate progress, and to solve problems.
Walkthroughs have more potential for producing improvement in student achievement and teacher effectiveness more than current teacher evaluations systems. They can also be the glue that brings together school improvement initiatives. Join this session and become familiar with five walkthrough mistakes that can cause teacher apprehension and fear. Explore an easy-to-use guide to plan, conduct, and debrief walkthroughs. Learn about seven ways to find time to conduct walkthroughs. Take away a plan for skillfully using walkthroughs to support school improvement initiatives.
Student achievement data is packed with valuable information. To improve both learning and teaching, start using assessment to listen to what students are saying about their learning strengths, challenges, and needs. Become familiar with five powerful practices for helping teachers understand classroom achievement data and matching it to high-yield, research-based strategies and instructional designs.
Unleash the power of students to succeed with renewed hope, increased confidence, and powerful strategies. Explore how to skillfully use research-supported practices for instructional focusing, pacing, chunking, scaffolding, monitoring, and accountable, peer-to-peer interaction. Feel five powerful skills that empower special needs and ELL students to efficiently store and retain, process, transfer, and apply content material and skills. See how you can help students win at school watering down your content material and lowering standards.
Imagine teaching and giving assignments where “no one gets lost and no one gets bored.” There have been many efforts to help the underachiever, but what about nurturing the student who may be bored and unchallenged because they are gifted or are high performers. Discover six things you can do to inspire engagement, with just the right amount of challenge, and at the right pace. Learn how you can use brain-based techniques and lesson formats to stretch their thinking beyond the basics.
Whether it is called value added, student growth, Race to the Top, or a new NCLB, it is likely that student achievement will play a significant factor in teacher evaluations and school improvement. Teachers need not be overwhelmed by this focus on measuring teacher effectiveness. We strive to help students increase their knowledge and skills every day. Learn easy six steps to individually and collaboratively plan for and “cause” student growth. Feel what it is like to radically celebrate progress in 30 to 60 days.
Discover how to become a powerful engine of school improvement. Take a virtual tour through a variety of leadership scenarios to explore how to expect and direct continual improvement and create a collaborative culture of inquiry and positive action in professional groups. Be involved in discovery activities to more closely examine ways to inspect existing conditions and improvement progress. See how you can show incredible respect for both effort and accomplishment. Learn how to encourage colleagues to reflect about and celebrate progress and to inspire hope, optimism, and positive measurable results.
Imagine giving reading and writing assignments/tasks where “no one gets lost and no one gets bored.” Learn how the brain operates during the reading and writing process and become familiar with additional strategies for teaching students to understand and write about readings and classroom experiences across the curriculum. See how you can easily design lessons to align to the new literacy standards while maintaining the integrity of content materials. Through simulated classroom activities, participants will practice strategies for managing student motivation and reading and writing performance differences.
Teachers, administrators, teacher leaders, and even instructional coaches sometimes need coaching to be successful. Become familiar with seven key practices of effective coaching. See how good things can happen when we have a better understanding of how to interact with others to form coaching relationships that are non-judgmental and inspire confidence and optimism. Join this session to learn what you already know and need to know about how effective coaches form powerful partnerships that help teachers, coaches, administrators, and students WIN at school.

Curriculum

  1. Curriculum Mapping and Aligning
  2. From Units to Lessons
  3. Using Data to Realign/Revise Curriculum
  4. Integrating Curriculum Across Content Areas
  5. Differentiating Curriculum for Special Needs and ELL Students
  6. Differentiating Curriculum for Gifted Students and High Achievers
  7. Integrating Cooperative Technical Education (CTE) Standards with Core Content Areas Standards

Assessment

  1. Designing and Using Formative and Summative Assessments
  2. Performance and Project-based Learning and Assessments that Inspire Inquiry and Higher Level
  3. Thinking
  4. Using Classroom Assessment Data to Respond to Student Learning Needs
  5. Listen! Students are Talking to Us in Their Assessments
  6. Differentiating Assessment for Special Ed and ELL Students
  7. Demystifying Student Growth

Instruction

  1. Inspiring a Passionate Drive to Achieve
  2. Helping Black and Hispanic Males Succeed
  3. What Good Schools Do When Students are Failing
  4. Really Teaching Reading Comprehension, Writing, Thinking Skills
  5. Teaching Learning-to-Learn and Executive Functioning Skills
  6. Using Cooperative Learning and Peer-to-Peer Interaction
  7. Getting and Using 100% Participation Through Active Learning
  8. Technology in the Classroom: It’s More Thank Slick Slides and the Internet
  9. Differentiating Instruction in Inclusive Classrooms for Special Ed, ELL, and RTI Students
  10. Just the Right Pace:  Getting, Keeping, and Using Students’ Attention
  11. Nurturing Giftedness, Creativity, Curiosity and Challenge
  12. I’ve Tried Everything:  A Guide to Help Struggling Learners Succeed

Learning Environment

  1. Restructuring Students”  The Making of Responsible and Successful Learners
  2. Behavior Management for a Respectful, Safe, and Productive Learning Environment
  3. Solving Chronic Misconduct Problems
  4. Inspiring Student Self-Esteem
  5. Interventions for Defiant and Oppositional Students
  6. Sustaining Productive and Respectful Student-Teaching Relationships

Professional Development and Learning Communities

  1. Re-Energizing Professional Learning Teams to WIN.
  2. Differentiating Professional Development
  3. Implementing New Teacher Mentor and Induction Programs that Really Support
  4. Evaluating School and District Professional Development Programs
  5. Peer and Instructional Coaching for Positive, Measurable Results

Paraprofessionals and Clerical Staff

  1. Paraprofessionals to Get Positive Results
  2. Giving Great Customer Service
  3. Adding Value to Your Day
  4. Resolving Work Conflict
  5. Co-Teaching Strategies for Paraprofessionals and Their Partners

Teacher and Administrative Leadership

  1. Leading with Hope, Optimism, and Credibility
  2. Six Sensational Tips for Teacher Leaders and Administrators
  3. Becoming the Change Agent You Dream About
  4. Conflict Resolution for School Leaders
  5. Organizational Strategic Plans and Initiatives
  6. Injecting New Life into Waltkthroughs
  7. Evaluating and Supervising Staff
  8. Building and Sustaining Collaboration Between Board of Education Members and School Leaders

Work Environment

  1. Harassment Prevention and Professional Conduct
  2. Sustaining High Morale and Job Satisfaction
  3. Creating a Positive School Culture and Climate
  4. Managing Conflict

Home Environment/Parents

  1. Enhancing School-Parent  Communication and Partnerships
  2. What Every Parent Wants to Know At Conferences
  3. Developing Positive Student Self-Esteem and Pride
  4. Resolving Academic Problems
  5. Creating a Great Home Learning Environment
  6. Parent Tutoring that Works
  7. Supporting Literacy Development At Home
  8. Inspiring Your Child’s Responsibility for Learning
  9. How to Talk to Your Child about Grades