Focus on Freshmen - Los Angeles
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Career Choices Lead Administrator/Teacher Institute
for Educators Responsible for Professional Development

Session Descriptions

Session 1: Overview of the Lead Teacher Strategy and Resources to Make Your Job Easier
The Career Choices Lead Teacher’s most important role is providing ongoing, sustained professional development. Over the next three days, you’ll learn a variety of strategies such as how to form a professional learning community with your Career Choices instructors, how to facilitate workshop sessions using video training modules, how to develop a customized lesson plan that will meet your freshman transition initiative’s goals, and how to get buy-in for this important total school reform effort. In this session, we’ll review the roles and responsibilities of an effective Lead Teacher and review the resources available in the Lead Teacher/Administrator Manual.

Session 2: Customizing Your Professional Development Plan Using Your 22 Workshop Agendas
To be competitive for reform initiative monies, you’ll need to prove that your school can provide capacitybuilding professional development to all stakeholders. We know that you have very little time for planning and preparation, so we’ve designed a system that makes this process easy and efficient. In this session, you’ll learn how to facilitate workshop sessions using the 45- minute workshop agendas and training videos outlined in your Lead Teacher/Administrator Manual. In addition, you’ll be exposed to a variety of professional development strategies, including building professional learning communities, so you can design a plan that works for you.

Session 3: The Five Ingredients of Success: Modeling a Workshop Agenda
Using one of the 22 workshop agendas in your Lead Teacher/Administrator Manual, your trainer will lead you through the training module The Five Ingredients of Success. Not only will you learn these five critical components of a Career Choices course, but you’ll also gain first-hand experience with this unique professional development system designed to help you launch your freshman transition initiative in an efficient and effective way.

Session 4: Integrating Academics and Technology into Your Whole School Reform Effort
As you begin working on your customized lesson plans today, we’ll review the academic and technology opportunities that you’ll want to consider integrating into your Career Choices coursework. And, because a key technology piece is the online 10-year plan, we’ll review this innovative strategy and the Lead Teacher’s role in the implementation of this advisory tool.

Session 5: Course Planning Strategies: Using Excel-formatted Templates to Jumpstart Your Planning
It’s far easier to edit than it is to create. In this session you’ll learn a system for creating customized lesson plans for your team using and Excel spreadsheet. You’ll piggyback on the experiences of hundreds of educators by learning how to start your planning using one of the lesson plan templates provided on your resource disk. The information from this session will save you hours and hours of work and you’ll be secure in knowing your course will culminate with every student creating a quantitative and meaningful 10-year plan.

Session 6: Higher-Order Teaching Strategies for the Career Choices Curriculum
To be competitive in the 21st century our students will require higher-order thinking and self-management skills. This skill development can only be delivered through higher-order teaching strategies. This session provides the opportunity to review the classroom management techniques that encourage this outcome. How will you know you are successful in your efforts? Learn assessment and evaluation techniques that will help you continually reassess your efforts so you can upgrade your classroom tactics.

Session 7: From an Instructor’s Perspective: Advice for Career Choices Teachers from Career Choices Teachers
Attendees from several Institutes will be treated to a very special panel discussion exploring freshman transition classrooms that work. This panel of Career Choices instructors will share some of the insights they've gained, techniques they've honed, and strategies they've implemented successfully in their own classrooms.