Author: Lucille Andolfo Title: Regents' Fellow Role: State admin/coordinator Location: Providence, RI Date: 10-16-02 One of the most valuable professional development activities I have participated in was an initiative started by teachers in my high school. We realized that our students were not achieving as well as we would like; a high failure rate was evident in many classes, and many students had multiple failures. As a result, our team identified the area of critical thinking, learning and study skills as a focus of need. We began a "task force" called the Thinking, Learning and Study Skills" Task Force, or TLS for short. Our district supported our work by scheduling common planning time for this small core group of about 15 educators. We researched best practice strategies (through reading, our own professional development, and site visits) and designed our own when we could not find suitable strategies. We modeled the strategies for each other, implemented them in our classrooms, adopted peer coaching to refine the implementation. Our approach was to intgegrate these strategies across all the content areas, as opposed to offering a study skills course or pull-out program. Eventually, as our confidence and success grew, we began offering workshops within district for other educators and for parents. A trio of handbooks were designed - one for teachers, a parent handbook, and a student handbook. The district hired a consultant to train this cadre of educators in the "train the trainer" model, and we subsequently brought our model to other districts. In conclusion, this project increased collegiality and built a true learning community. Our students learned many strategies which crossed disciplines and led to their academic and personal success.

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