Institute Work

Work of the Institute

In this teachers teaching teachers model, master teachers from public schools are invited to attend a five-week Invitational Summer Institute at local university sites to prepare to lead professional development in-services for their colleagues. During the school year, districts collaborate with Institute sites to design programs tailored to district needs.

Collaboration among sites of the Institute has resulted in programs such as the WONDER of Learning, Portfolios for Assessment and Learning, Secondary Content Opening to Reading Excellence, Revisiting Reading/Writing Connections, and annual conferences on assessment and teacher research. In collaboration with the Mississippi Department of Education, the Institute developed summer youth remediation programs and related a performance assessment, professional development for the new assessment system, a strand of sessions for the assessment symposium, three programs to introduce the new language arts framework and an integrated science and math program for elementary teachers. A collaboration with the Program for Research and Evaluation of Public Schools (PREPS) consortium resulted in an integrated assessment project implemented in June 1996 and continues with a subject area project for Algebra I, Biology, American History, and English II.

On a national level, the Institute collaborates with the National Writing Project on programs such as Project Outreach for teachers of at-risk students, the Directors Retreat, Rural Voices radio, an Academy for Educational Development (AED) study, a national study of student writing and teacher assignments with AED, and a Parent Project. The Institute recently received federal funding that will be used to develop a multi-year program to improve the teaching of writing in K-12 classrooms across the state.