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About Us
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Initiatives
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Special Projects
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Dr. Roberta Lenger Kang
Center Director |
Dr. Ruth Vinz
Founding Director |
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Courtney Brown
Senior Professional Development Advisor |
Dr. Cristina Romeo Compton
Director of Program Development |
G. Faith Little
Senior Program Manager, Special Projects |
Kaydie Milks
Director of Operations |
Brian Veprek
Lead Professional Development Advisor |
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Since 2002, CPET has been a leader in providing customized professional development services to partners in New York City and beyond through our K-12 Professional Development initiative. Coaching services in all content areas, instructional and assessment strategies, and leadership have generated powerful, long-term partnerships. None of this work would be possible without our amazing team, committed school and community partners, the support of Teachers College, and a small group of generous donors. Thank you all for your support and partnership.
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In 2018, we provided
1,185 days of professional
development, which impacted:
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230
schools and organizations |
1,600
teachers and administrators |
15,500
students, grades K-12 |
K-12 Coaching
TRANSFORMING TEACHER PRACTICE
TRANSFORMING TEACHER PRACTICE
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ONE YEAR, 1,600 TEACHERS
With projects in all five boroughs of New York City, the tri-state area (including Yonkers, Pelham, and North Plainfield), and elsewhere in the US (including Georgia and Pennsylvania), our coaching team has had a wide-reaching impact on K-12 educators. Through direct support for instructional strategies and coaching for leaders, content area teachers, and struggling teachers, we supported over 1,600 teachers in 2018. Our coaches provide professional development at the elementary, middle, and high school levels, and at all levels of professional development, our team brings an attention to standards-aligned curriculum and innovative instructional practices, as well as modeling and mentoring to create a positive professional learning community for teachers and school leaders. |
LONG-TERM IMPACT
By offering both general instructional coaching and content-specific coaching, our K-12 professional development projects have cultivated strong partnerships with schools who return year after year for extended services. These partnerships develop strong relationships with their coaches, who evolve the work each year. These schools are stronger than other schools in their peer group as a direct result of our work together. Schools who work with CPET for two or more years tend to perform better on their Quality Reviews, see an increase in teacher performance according to Advance Ratings, and see an impact on student achievement data. |
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“I’ve been an educator for over 15 years. CPET’s
team is among the best I’ve ever worked with.”
team is among the best I’ve ever worked with.”
Global Learning Alliance
WORLD CLASS, FOR EVERY CLASS
WORLD CLASS, FOR EVERY CLASS
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ABOUT THE ALLIANCE
The Global Learning Alliance (GLA) is the outgrowth of CPET’s ground-breaking research in five of the top PISA-ranked cities around the world on the features and practices surrounding 21st century teaching and learning. It has evolved from the seeds of a collaborative research project within the Center, Teachers College, Scarsdale Public Schools, and the Hwa Chong Institute in Singapore. Along with CPET, these organizations have leveraged the findings of their research to found the GLA — a consortium of schools and universities around the world dedicated to understanding, defining, applying, and sharing the principles and practices of a world-class education within a wide range of educational contexts. |
FOUNDING INSTITUTIONS
Hwa Chong University, Singapore National Institute of Education, Singapore Scarsdale Public Schools, USA Teachers College, Columbia University, USA University of Helsinki, Finland PARTICIPATING ORGANIZATIONS
Desheng School, China Edgemont School District, USA Garden City UFDS, USA Helsinki Normal Lyceum, Finland MiSK Schools, Saudi Arabia Nanyang Girls’ School, Singapore S:t Iliansskolan, Sweden Tri-State Consortium, USA |
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2018 SUMMIT IN HELSINKI, FINLAND
In August 2018, we co-sponsored the Global Learning Alliance Summit in Helsinki, Finland. CPET brought ten facilitators and researchers to lead the event, which was centered on the theme of wellness and human well-being. With representatives from eight countries in attendance, the 60-person delegation engaged in critical conversations and collaborative workshops aligned with understanding the strengths and struggles of teaching in the 21st century. The cross-cultural research project conducted by students from three countries (Finland, Singapore, and the United States) was a highlight of the Summit. Students in each country researched what wellness and well-being meant to them in their own context, and then met with students from other countries to compare findings and develop a shared response to the needs they discovered. The students developed their responses in cross-cultural groups and developed a paper and presentation which they shared at the Summit. Alongside the student-led research project and the CPET-led workshops on 21st century skills, the GLA hosted renowned Finnish researcher and speaker Pasi Sahlberg, who shared his findings on what is and isn’t working in 21st century education. He encouraged the GLA delegates to focus on knowing our students deeply, and to consider how our cultural values make our schools unique. As a result of the research data collected at the 2018 Summit, our team is working on articulating the findings of the research in a paper for publication in 2019. |
Literacy Unbound
RE-IMAGINING TEXTS AND TEACHING
RE-IMAGINING TEXTS AND TEACHING
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RE-IMAGINING THE CLASSROOM
The Literacy Unbound initiative was originally conceived as a grand experiment in teacher education that sought to encourage instructors to consider the power of artistic play as an opportunity to help students develop as critical, collaborative, creative readers. Now in its fifth year, Literacy Unbound continues to refine its philosophy and practices through iterative experimentation in an intensive summer institute, even as the initiative extends its outreach into schools. The summer institute is the initiative’s marquee event, but its true function is to serve as a laboratory in which Literacy Unbound facilitators can experiment with curricular and pedagogical structures that they can share with the wider world throughout the year. Literacy Unbound both awakens educators to their own innate creativity and provides specific literacy strategies to leverage that creativity in the classroom. Our coaches take the work into schools and conferences around the world, where they invite teachers to play with texts and experience the joy and educational value of collaborative play. |
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“Teachers aren’t teachers.
Students aren’t students.
We’re all players.”
Student Press Initiative
PUBLISHING STUDENTS, INSPIRING TEACHERS
PUBLISHING STUDENTS, INSPIRING TEACHERS
Part professional development, part artist collaboration and part non-for-profit publisher, the Student Press Initiative (SPI)’s mission is to revolutionize education by advancing teacher leadership in reading and writing instruction. We work in partnership with teachers and school communities to share ideas for how to better plan and produce all-inclusive learning experiences that culminate with students “going public” with their learning. Through publication, we raise the bar for what, how, and why students write.
Through partnerships with nine schools in New York City, New Jersey, Georgia, and Singapore, the SPI team supported the design and implementation of literacy units that culminated in 14 print-based, student-authored publications. Each publication showcased a powerful collection of student voices. In Speaking Our Piece, 9th and 10th grade special education students from the Morris Academy of Collaborative Studies explored systemic injustices that had profound effects on their daily lives through powerfully-worded executive orders and political manifestos. In Sensational Super Scholars, high school students from Claremont International High School shared their creative and unique take on some dark and difficult problems in the world.
SPI also reunited with East River Academy, an alternative school located on Rikers Island. Coaches there supported students in crafting compelling narratives as part of the anthology Building Bridges: Crossing from Struggle to Survival, which provided space for students to reflect, reset, and restart. As part of a new international partnership, SPI coaches traveled to Singapore American School to support a group of ambitious juniors and seniors in designing, publishing, and publicizing their very first publication, Beneath the Lion City. The anthology explores cultural conflict in Singapore through stories about irreal elements in real Singaporean contexts.
Through a collaboration with the Literacy Unbound initiative, the SPI team partnered with the Literacy Unbound players to develop an e-book publication of student and teacher reflections from their participation in the 2017 Literacy Unbound institute – an immersive, intensive course for passionate and curious teachers and students to come together in creative collaboration.
Through partnerships with nine schools in New York City, New Jersey, Georgia, and Singapore, the SPI team supported the design and implementation of literacy units that culminated in 14 print-based, student-authored publications. Each publication showcased a powerful collection of student voices. In Speaking Our Piece, 9th and 10th grade special education students from the Morris Academy of Collaborative Studies explored systemic injustices that had profound effects on their daily lives through powerfully-worded executive orders and political manifestos. In Sensational Super Scholars, high school students from Claremont International High School shared their creative and unique take on some dark and difficult problems in the world.
SPI also reunited with East River Academy, an alternative school located on Rikers Island. Coaches there supported students in crafting compelling narratives as part of the anthology Building Bridges: Crossing from Struggle to Survival, which provided space for students to reflect, reset, and restart. As part of a new international partnership, SPI coaches traveled to Singapore American School to support a group of ambitious juniors and seniors in designing, publishing, and publicizing their very first publication, Beneath the Lion City. The anthology explores cultural conflict in Singapore through stories about irreal elements in real Singaporean contexts.
Through a collaboration with the Literacy Unbound initiative, the SPI team partnered with the Literacy Unbound players to develop an e-book publication of student and teacher reflections from their participation in the 2017 Literacy Unbound institute – an immersive, intensive course for passionate and curious teachers and students to come together in creative collaboration.
NEW RELEASES FROM SPI
New Teacher Network
BUILDING A FOUNDATION FOR THE FUTURE
BUILDING A FOUNDATION FOR THE FUTURE
The New Teacher Network at Teachers College (NTN@TC) is a community of practice for TC’s newest teachers. Nearly 200 TC graduates have connected to the network to receive a blend of in-person and online collaboration, personalized support through customized professional development workshops, personalized coaching, and to be part of a dedicated NTN@TC online community.
The NTN@TC online community seeks to support network members by providing a discussion forum, a library of digital resources, and the ability to request immediate help from a CPET coach. In the discussion forum, teachers pose questions, share successes, and upload documents, in order to get feedback from their peers. The aim of this forum is to establish an asynchronous, peer-to-peer conversation around the issues early-career teachers find most pressing.
In addition to the support they receive via the online community, NTN@TC members also have access to in-person CPET workshops hosted at the college. In previous years, network members attended Need to Know: Workshops for New Teachers, a year-long, six-session series of full-day professional learning workshops that focus on support for early-career teachers by establishing a community of practice in which they can reflect upon topics related to their interests and refine the work they are doing in their classrooms.
As the network moves into its fourth year, we welcome a new cohort of first-year teachers while continuing to support our second- and third-year members as they build capacity and flourish in their schools. First-year members will attend the new Surviving the Semester workshop series, a retooled, one-semester version of Need to Know. Second-year members will attend Keep the Kids Talking, a workshop series designed to boost teachers’ conceptual understanding of and technical skill in facilitating engaging, higher-order student-to-student academic conversation in their classrooms. Meanwhile, third-year members may enroll in the CPET workshop of their choice at no cost.
Finally, in June 2017, NTN@TC hosted a job fair at which new and soon-to-be graduates of the college could connect with representatives from CPET partner schools that were seeking to fill positions on their faculties. 61 Teachers College students and alums met with representatives from 14 schools and DOE offices.
The NTN@TC online community seeks to support network members by providing a discussion forum, a library of digital resources, and the ability to request immediate help from a CPET coach. In the discussion forum, teachers pose questions, share successes, and upload documents, in order to get feedback from their peers. The aim of this forum is to establish an asynchronous, peer-to-peer conversation around the issues early-career teachers find most pressing.
In addition to the support they receive via the online community, NTN@TC members also have access to in-person CPET workshops hosted at the college. In previous years, network members attended Need to Know: Workshops for New Teachers, a year-long, six-session series of full-day professional learning workshops that focus on support for early-career teachers by establishing a community of practice in which they can reflect upon topics related to their interests and refine the work they are doing in their classrooms.
As the network moves into its fourth year, we welcome a new cohort of first-year teachers while continuing to support our second- and third-year members as they build capacity and flourish in their schools. First-year members will attend the new Surviving the Semester workshop series, a retooled, one-semester version of Need to Know. Second-year members will attend Keep the Kids Talking, a workshop series designed to boost teachers’ conceptual understanding of and technical skill in facilitating engaging, higher-order student-to-student academic conversation in their classrooms. Meanwhile, third-year members may enroll in the CPET workshop of their choice at no cost.
Finally, in June 2017, NTN@TC hosted a job fair at which new and soon-to-be graduates of the college could connect with representatives from CPET partner schools that were seeking to fill positions on their faculties. 61 Teachers College students and alums met with representatives from 14 schools and DOE offices.
“I love and appreciate the comfortable and open space for honest discussion and sharing of experiences. It should happen more often in our schools.”
-- New Teacher Network member Richelle Jurasek
Chancellor's Day Conferences
#PDatTC
#PDatTC
On Chancellor’s days, we welcome teachers into a space where they can inspire and be inspired as they reflect, collaborate, and practice alongside each other and CPET’s expert facilitators. In 2017, we welcomed participants from over 100 schools to Teachers College, Columbia University for these professional development conferences.
Inspire provided space for participants to reconnect to their passion and purpose as educators. Through the lens of Carol Dweck’s growth mindset, teachers experienced workshops that matched their highest priorities, including sessions focused on differentiated instruction and maximizing co-teaching relationships.
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At The Big Learning Challenge, we welcomed teachers across the city to engage in a conference that focused on the power of project-based learning. Participants previewed innovative workshops, practiced new instructional strategies, and made connections with other NYC teachers by engaging in authentic problem-solving through one of the six project offerings for the day. Applicable for teachers across content areas and grade levels, this hands-on, experiential conference introduced teachers to a wide variety of project styles that incorporated real-world challenges with Common Core skills and interdisciplinary content knowledge.
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In Practice brought teachers together for a unique teaching & learning experience that leveraged critical reflection, peer-to-peer discourse, and inspirational workshops to help educators reflect on their school year and begin to turn their sights towards the future in a meaningful and productive setting. Participants also previewed the latest research coming from CPET coaches.
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“I loved the collaborative structure of the day – sharing aloud, working in groups, writing, discussing, and walking away with tools and resources.”
Workshop Series
#PDatTC
#PDatTC
Workshop series at the Center continue to be a strong, foundational focus for our facilitators. Uniquely crafted and truly customized, CPET offers workshops that support bilingual education, co-teaching, literacy K-12, Math 6-12, early career teachers, social-emotional structures, and special education. All CPET workshop sessions of a series are designed with time for critical reflection, planning and practice, and an exploration into pertinent research.
In 2017 we offered the following series:
In 2017 we offered the following series:
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• ENL in Gen Ed: Strategies to support emerging bilingual students
• Fighting Math Phobia: Any person can be a Math person • Keep the Kids Talking: Shifting from Q&A to Q&D |
• Special Teams: Models for co-teaching and collaboration
• Supporting Struggling Readers: Reading complex texts in secondary schools • Surviving the Semester: Meeting the needs of early career teachers |
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• Flexible, knowledgeable, empowering facilitators
• Supportive and honest environment • Time to implement new strategies • Reviewing and practicing discussion strategies in a meaningful way • Connections to current practice • Collaboration with other educators |
CenterED Teaching
CONVERSATIONS ABOUT PRACTICE AND POLICY
CONVERSATIONS ABOUT PRACTICE AND POLICY
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MOST PLAYED EPISODES
• Framework for Great Schools
• Common Core – What’s Common? • Teaching in Today’s Political Climate • Conversations with First-Year Teachers |
The CenterED Teaching podcast has developed over the last eight months into a weekly resource that is concise, informative, and practical. The podcast covers everything from federal and state education policy, to CPET initiatives that challenge different pedagogies, to discussions over the complex negotiations of social-emotional learning in test-intensive schools. Aimed at educators from all walks of life, CenterED Teaching seeks to shape educational practice through a discursive medium that the listener can plug into at his/her own leisure. Moreover, the podcast also seeks to create new access points in policy and practice conversations to those who before may have felt excluded. In essence, CenterED Teaching is an experiment in educator learning in the 21st century.
Though CenterED Teaching has ambitious goals, it comes from humble beginnings. CenterED originally began as a weekly conversation between three regular CPET team members who would come together to discuss a variety of topics, including the recurring issues they were seeing in their roles as professional development coaches. Over time, the CenterED Teaching team expanded to include additional voices and perspectives, allowing the podcast to produce more meaningful episodes and a wealth of online resources for listeners.
While the CenterED Teaching podcast is new to the Center, it holds great promise for further developing the knowledge and skills of CPET members and reaching a new generation of teachers through a contemporary medium and increasing regularity.
Though CenterED Teaching has ambitious goals, it comes from humble beginnings. CenterED originally began as a weekly conversation between three regular CPET team members who would come together to discuss a variety of topics, including the recurring issues they were seeing in their roles as professional development coaches. Over time, the CenterED Teaching team expanded to include additional voices and perspectives, allowing the podcast to produce more meaningful episodes and a wealth of online resources for listeners.
While the CenterED Teaching podcast is new to the Center, it holds great promise for further developing the knowledge and skills of CPET members and reaching a new generation of teachers through a contemporary medium and increasing regularity.
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Nazareth Area School District
PENNSYLVANIA CPET’s partnership with Nazareth has provided on-site coaching for educators within the district. Its primary focus has been on equipping Nazareth teachers with the tools and practices necessary for aligning their curriculum to state standards, as well as the Global Capacities Framework - a research-based set of habits of mind that were developed by CPET staff in cooperation with universities and secondary school in the United States, Singapore, Finland, Australia, and China. Through several sets of workshops in the district, CPET coaches provided space for long-term planning, unit planning, curriculum design, and the design of performance tasks aligned with their educational objectives.
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Osborne High School
GEORGIA Osborne continued their partnership with CPET through two separate projects - one focused on student publication, and the other a continuation of their School Improvement Institute. Through a three-way collaboration between the Student Press Initiative (SPI), Osborne teachers, and their students, Osborne High School will publish three student-authored publications in Spring 2018. Using SPI’s mission and philosophy and the five phases of the publishing process, this project allowed our partners at Osborne to explore promising practices in their classrooms, and to re-imagine the possibilities for student writing. At the second annual School Improvement Institute, hosted at Teachers College, CPET helped Osborne educators to reach their goals of cultivating strengths in teachers and students, designing the productive struggle, and creating systems that support struggling students. Over the course of three days, CPET facilitators brought research to life, and assisted the Osborne team with strategic planning that could be implemented upon returning to their school.
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River Vale School District
NEW JERSEY The River Vale School District innovated their pedagogical practice by incorporating 21st century skills into the heart of their K-12 curriculum. Through their Portrait of a Graduate project, they identified key skills that students need to master as they transition from school to career. CPET facilitators led teachers through the exploration of 21st century skills and global capacities and considered the implications of integrating these skills into the existing curriculum and assessment framework. Teachers transformed a simple writing prompt into dynamic, multifaceted projects with the addition of 1-2 new learning goals from the Global Capacities Framework. The work in River Vale continues in 2018 with ongoing support to teachers, school and district leaders.
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Singapore American School
SINGAPORE Our partnership with SAS is grounded in two CPET initiatives: the Student Press Initiative (SPI) and Literacy Unbound. With a goal of advancing student achievement in literacy and creative and critical thinking, CPET coaches traveled to Singapore to support teachers in the design and implementation of new projects. These two teams worked to support teachers and students in art-centric, problem- and project-based learning endeavors, which allowed for the re-conceptualizing of curriculum and a shared understanding of possibilities for their classrooms. As a result of their work with the SPI team, students at SAS created their first publication – a collection of student-authored stories that examine the magic and strangeness of living in Singapore in the 21st century. Our team will continue to return to Singapore American School as they work on their second publication, which will focus on dystopian societies.
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Tianjin Normal University
CHINA Twenty professors from Tianjin, China joined CPET at Teachers College for the third annual Global Capacities Institute. The week-long intensive focused on the key features of 21st century skills, and provided experiential workshops that exemplified ways of bringing learning to life. TNU professors were encouraged by daily keynote speakers who presented their research on 21st century teaching, early childhood education, and educational innovation. Participants were equipped by exploring literature through multiple modalities, with the help of Literacy Unbound and the Student Press Initiative. Each professor experimented with design thinking as a method to implement their learning. Following visits to local schools where the group was able to interact with school leaders, participants were empowered by seeing 21st century teaching in action, and considered how the social-emotional health of students can be supported and improved by strengthening school structures in order to support caring relationships student-to-student, teacher-to-student, and teacher-to-teacher.
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You Xi
CHINA Our partnership with You Xi, an organization that serves Chinese families and students by helping schools raise their teaching standards and working closely with local teachers on their professional development, began in 2017 through a series of online learning opportunities. Leveraging technology as a means of providing high-quality professional development to teachers who are 13 hours ahead and 7,300+ miles from Teachers College, CPET launched live, online workshops customized for specific groupings of teachers in English and Science. Each workshop includes a focus on instructional strategies, examples of practical skills, and tools to support 21st century practices.
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Funding sources & spending
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