July 1, 2012–June 30, 2013
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[accordion_item title="Digital Learning" icon="fa fa-edit"]
Bridging Achievement Gaps with Digital Literacy
This blended learning experience used online communities and face to face instruction to give teachers a variety of strategies for providing students with skills needed to access and use readily available technology. With these strategies, the participants can align their curricula with current state mandated standards with a focus upon the use of technology as one helpful method for bridging existing achievement gaps.
Catching Up with Your Students: Navigating Technology for 21st Century Classrooms (multiple offerings)
This professional development offering was designed to equip teachers with skills in using available and inexpensive technological tools to increase student engagement and to advance curricular goals.
Four Cs of 21st Century Education
In addition to the classic three Rs of education, the reality of our technically integrated society and the competition of the global economy require our students to be prepared with the four Cs needed to succeed in the modern workforce: critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity. This seminar provided teachers with experiences using digital technologies that can be integrated into the classroom to teach content and to evaluate student progress while promoting critical, creative, and collaborative thinking.
Kenan Fellows Summer Institute (Technology Focus)
In partnership with the Kenan Fellows Program, an innovative model to promote teacher leadership, address teacher retention, and advance K–12 science, technology, and mathematics education, NCCAT developed and facilitated this event focused upon giving the teacher-participants new tools and increased connectivity so that they would be prepared to successfully navigate their year-long fellowship.
NCCAT Data Literacy Initiative (Pilot—Year Long—Blended Program)
The NCCAT Data Literacy Initiative pilot served as a starting point for the training and recruitment of a corps of NCCAT Data Literacy Specialists and the launching point of a program designed to help teachers successfully integrate assessment and data use as a part of improving their classroom practice, successfully differentiating instruction to address student needs, and, thereby, to accurately measure and assess and increase student growth and achievement. More information about the program can be found at: http://seizethelearningdata.com
Wiki, Wacky, What? Understanding Web 2.0 Applications
This introductory course was designed specifically for teachers who had little prior experience with using digital tools to enhance classroom learning. The course served to enhance the participants’ ability to use digital learning to engage their students more fully and to enhance student academic growth.
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[accordion_item title="Literacy" icon="fa fa-edit"]
Best Practices for Motivating Reluctant Readers
North Carolina has a dedicated initiative to ensure that all students who graduate are college and career ready as reflected by their proficiency in independently reading complex informational text in a variety of content areas. This seminar explored the most effective strategies for motivating reluctant readers with a special focus on research-based methods for engaging existing resources in schools and communities to address student needs.
Dropout Solutions that Work
Recent dropout data shows an annual loss of more than 20,000 students each year in North Carolina’s public schools. The economic and social cost of student dropout in our state is exceedingly high. This learning experience focused upon workable solutions and literacy enhancing interventions that allow educators to leverage existing resources so that parents, social service providers, businesses, and civic organizations can be partners in providing options, skills, and hope to at-risk students.
Power of Words
In conjunction with the English department at Western Carolina University, teacher participants were given the opportunity to learn from nationally and internationally published authors of fiction, non-fiction, and literary works. This exploration focused upon the work of writing as a learning process that reaches across the curriculum.
Teachers Writing = Writing Teachers
Writing is an essential college and career readiness skill, as well as being an essential life skill. As teachers of writing—and all teachers are teachers of writing—our goal is to help our students develop the skills, knowledge, confidence, and motivation to meet the writing challenges in their future. But even after years of instruction, many of our students still struggle when they have to transfer the writing process from one context to another. One reason for this struggle is that most people are highly apprehensive about writing and don’t see themselves as “writers.” Using the National Writing Project’s foundational insight that teachers who are writers are better teachers of writing, participants in this seminar improved their understanding of the writing process and, in turn, were given practical strategies to help their students become better writers.
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[accordion_item title="Teacher Leadership" icon="fa fa-edit"]
Leadership, Creativity, and Change: Daring to Lead
Designed for District, Regional, and State Teachers of the Year, this program focused upon helping excellent teachers to continue to expand their educational leadership without having to leave teaching. This seminar was funded in part by BB&T Charitable Foundation.
One Amazing Year Program: Capstone Experience
The One Amazing Year Program assembled two-person teams from selected schools to assist them in designing and implementing a year of professional and personal practice that would rise to such a level of excellence that it can accurately be described as “amazing.”
Sandhills Regional Education Consortium: Sandhills Leadership Academy (multiple events)
Aspiring principals from public school systems in Anson, Cumberland, Harnett, Hoke, Lee, Montgomery, Moore, Richmond, and Scotland counties, and the Public Schools of Robeson County participated in the Sandhills Leadership Academy in partnership with Fayetteville State University, the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, and NCCAT. As part of a multi-year program, NCCAT hosted the Sandhills Leadership Academy during their summer institute. Participants explored the North Carolina Standards for School Executives, ethics for school administrators, conflict resolution, systems thinking in learning organizations, and best management practices for educational leadership. The Sandhills Leadership Academy is funded through a grant from Race to the Top and the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation.
U.S. Coast Guard: Teamwork and Leadership from the Edge
The United States Coast Guard has instilled and maintained teamwork and leadership, with limited resources, during ever-changing missions. This seminar allowed North Carolina teachers to explore teamwork and leadership from another perspective. Participants returned to their home base with new ways of assessing and engaging as educational leaders for their peers and for their students.
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[accordion_item title="Meeting North Carolina State Standards" icon="fa fa-edit"]NCCAT works to help teachers meet the most current standards put forward by the North Carolina State Board of Education as directed by North Carolina State law. In 2012–2013, NCCAT delivered training to teachers both at our located facilities and in face to face trainings that helped teachers adapt their instruction to the state-mandated standards, which, during the period of their delivery were the Common Core and North Carolina State Essential Standards. A list of programming from this fiscal year is below:
Common Core Principles: Angier Elementary (Harnett)
Common Core Principles: Piney Grove Elementary (Robeson)
Common Core Principles: Green Grove and Long Branch Elementary (Robeson)
Common Core Principles: Northampton County
Common Core Principles: Sugar Creek Charter School (Mecklenburg)
Common Core Principles and STEM: York Elementary (Wake)
Critical Thinking and the Common Core (A week-long intensive for K12 educators statewide)
Integrating the Common Core State and North Carolina Essential Standards into K–2 Curriculum (multiple offerings) (A week-long intensive for K12 educators statewide)
Integrating the Common Core State and North Carolina Essential Standards into 3–5 Curriculum (multiple offerings) (A week-long intensive for K12 educators statewide)[/accordion_item]
[accordion_item title="Science, Engineering, and Math" icon="fa fa-edit"]While our 2012–2013 technology courses are listed above in the “Digital Learning” section, we also offered a series of courses that engaged the remaining parts of STEM in the form of programs designed to meet the most current standards. The following courses were designed to take advantage of notable geographic features near to one of our campuses. These experiential learning courses were designed for teachers to focus upon the intersection of multiple areas of science (geology, biology, ecology, etc.) and the effect that the geography, biodiversity, and human cultures of North Carolina had upon each other. By using an interdisciplinary approach to experiential learning, NCCAT faculty modeled and encouraged the use of outdoor resources to engage, inspire, and to accomplish meaningful learning objectives.
Cullowhee Based Seminars:
A Sense of Place: Exploring the Biogeography of North Carolina’s Blue Ridge
Islands in the Sky: The Ecosystems of High Elevation Forests of the Southern Appalachians
Ocracoke Based Seminars:
Ecology of the Barrier Islands
In the Kingdom of the Tides: The Dynamic Outer Banks
Sea Level Rise: The Impact of Climate Change on the Outer Banks (funded in full by the Piedmont Natural Gas Foundation)
Sea, Sand, and Human Hands: The Changing Face of the Outer Banks.
North Carolina from the Mountains to the Sea[/accordion_item]
[accordion_item title="Classroom Management" icon="fa fa-edit"]The NCCAT Connections program is a sustained one-year program designed to support teachers in their first year of teaching. In this fiscal year NCCAT worked with several counties to provide programming for their beginning teachers. These learning experiences were funded as noted in the parentheses:
Connections: Edgecombe County (Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation)
Connections: Halifax County (UNC General Administration–Race to the Top)
Connections: Hertford County (Hertford County)
Connections: Richmond County (Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation)
Connections: Rockingham County (Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation)
We also offered multiple sections of a one week intensive program designed for teachers in their second and third years of teaching.
Connect to Your Future: Celebrating Success in the Classroom
This seminar supported motivated beginning teachers in their second or third year of teaching by strengthening their knowledge base and classroom expertise. Through experiential learning, teachers explored pedagogical concerns including differentiated instruction, brain-based research, communication, assessment, and classroom management.
Behavior Management and Common Core Principles—ILTs (Bladen County)
Bladen County Beginning Teachers
Western Carolina University Beginning Teacher Symposium[/accordion_item]
[accordion_item title="Other Instructional Programs" icon="fa fa-edit"]
Closing the Global Achievement Gap: The United States and Asia
As part of a working partnership between the North Carolina Teaching Asia Network (NCTAN) and NCCAT this learning intensive provided an in-residence experience for North Carolina teachers who are interested in learning and teaching about Asia as a way of introducing the students of North Carolina to their eventual global partners, customers, and competitors.
Differentiated Instruction: Charlotte Secondary Charter School (Mecklenburg County)
Program offered to the Charlotte Secondary Charter as requested by their administrators with a focus upon the best practices in differentiating instruction.
Gaston County Teach and Learn Program
A program contracted by Gaston County as part of their professional development efforts.
Gathering of Holocaust Educators
For a number of years, North Carolina public school educators who teach about the Holocaust and genocide have gathered at NCCAT to connect or reconnect with teachers from across the state dedicated to education in this most difficult of subject areas. This weekend meeting gives these dedicated educators the opportunity to deepen their skill and knowledge as they join together to focus ways to responsibly, accurately, and appropriately include Holocaust and genocide education in the classroom as a part of addressing state standards and promoting student engagement and achievement.
Integrating the Arts across the Curriculum
The Excellent Public Schools Act of 2013 has charged teachers with the responsibility of integrating arts education across the curriculum. This seminar gave teachers at multiple grade levels and in multiple subject areas practical examples of how art can motivate, empower, build persistence, teach teamwork, improve memory, increase attention span, strengthen abstract thinking, and prepare students to deal productively with complexity, ambiguity, and frustration. It also gave them information about and access to a number of digital resources that were immediately useful in the classroom.
Landscape of Democracy: Our National Parks
In partnership with the United States National Park Service, teacher participants in this experiential seminar were given an opportunity to understand how they can use national and state resources to supplement their classroom efforts by leveraging inexpensive or free resources (both on location and online).
Move It! The Physically Active Academic Classroom
A wealth of research supports the hypothesis that physical activity can boost comprehension, retention, and self-regulation in students of all achievement levels. During this seminar, teachers learned a variety of strategies for investing their instruction with physical activity, but not at the expense of intellectual rigor.
Teaching the Holocaust: Resources and Reflections
The aim of this seminar is to gain an understanding of the precursors, events, and consequences of the Holocaust and to grapple with the problem of how best to convey this history and its meaning to our students. This seminar is for educators involved or interested in teaching about the Holocaust to students eleven years of age and older.
Temples of the Sun: The Early History of North Carolina
The new North Carolina Essential Standards for Social Studies call for elementary and secondary school teachers to explore the nature and impact of pre-Columbian civilizations of North America. Among the societies with the greatest lasting physical impact were the so-called “Mound Builders” who flourished in an area stretching from Oklahoma to Florida. This experiential course allowed teachers to connect with a sometimes forgotten history of this region.[/accordion_item]
[accordion_item title="Conferences and Meetings" icon="fa fa-edit"]
NCCAT served as a host for a number of conferences and meetings related to education and the continuing professional development of public servants state wide. The costs for these meetings and conferences were paid for by the contracting agency and any funds generated by the activity beyond operating costs were allocated to support other programming for NCCAT. These events are only scheduled after all NCCAT programming events are scheduled and are intended to allow for as complete use of state resources as possible.
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