KIPP DC Public Schools, the second-largest preK–12 district in Washington, DC, is dedicated to providing students with access to high-quality, culturally affirming education. Central to this mission is their commitment to hiring exceptional talent—whether or not they are certified teachers—and helping them grow into top educators. Read on to see how KIPP DC used TORSH Talent to help streamline teacher recruitment and development.

KIPP DC streamlines teacher recruitment and professional development with TORSH Talent

Transforming Teacher Recruitment with TORSH Talent

After the COVID-19 pandemic, KIPP DC aimed to transition back to in-person interviews. However, scheduling in-person demo lessons for time-strapped principals and district leaders posed a challenge. Rather than requiring candidates to present their demo lessons multiple times, the hiring team sought out technology to streamline the evaluation process.

Shanelle Trenard, Associate Director of Instructional Hiring at KIPP DC, initially considered having candidates film lessons on their phones and upload them to Google Drive. However, concerns about data security prompted the team to explore a more secure solution. That’s when they turned to TORSH Talent, an innovative coaching and professional learning platform.

Secure and Convenient Demo Lesson Review with TORSH Talent

One of TORSH Talent’s standout features is its secure video upload functionality, enabling seamless collaboration across the district.

TORSH Talent’s flexible platform allows for various modes of teacher development

• Reimagined Demo Lessons: Candidates present their demo lessons in person on a KIPP DC campus, and the hiring team records and uploads the lessons to TORSH Talent. School leaders across the district can log in at their convenience to review and assess multiple candidates.
• Data-Driven Hiring Decisions: KIPP DC’s hiring team plans to implement competency-based rubrics and data-driven assessments in TORSH Talent, ensuring a thorough and consistent evaluation process.

“This year we focused more on quality over quantity, and TORSH Talent has definitely helped us do that.”

— Shanelle Trenard, Associate Director of Instructional Hiring, KIPP DC

Nurturing Exceptional Teachers through the Capital Teaching Residency

As one of Washington, DC’s highest-performing school districts, KIPP DC prioritizes teacher quality. When hiring, the focus is less on prior teaching experience and more on whether candidates are mission-aligned and committed to continuous growth.

For individuals without teaching credentials—such as recent graduates or career changers—KIPP DC offers a pathway to state licensure through the Capital Teaching Residency. This program welcomes candidates from all backgrounds and provides intensive, hands-on training, including mentorship and coaching.

TORSH Talent: Supporting Teacher Development in the Residency Program

KIPP DC leverages TORSH Talent to deliver personalized, job-embedded coaching to Capital Teaching Residents. The platform supports both synchronous and asynchronous learning, ensuring residents receive ongoing, tailored feedback to help them grow as educators.

• Pathway to Licensure: As an accredited Educator Preparation Program (EPP), residents engage in meaningful coursework that aligns with the daily work of high-performing teachers. Torsh seamlessly integrates with our learning management system, enabling resident faculty to grade teaching videos and provide actionable feedback on residents’ practice.
• Feedback for Growth: Residents utilize the goals feature to set performance objectives aligned with the built-in rubrics. With support from the residency team, Capital Teaching Residents work towards mastery with clear action steps and models provided in the exemplar showcase.

With over 100 Capital Teaching Residents becoming KIPP DC Teachers of the Year, and 70% of alumni remaining in teaching or leadership roles after four years, the program is a proven success.

Professional development and teacher coaching can take place in virtual or hybrid settings with TORTH Talent

TORSH Talent: Empowering KIPP DC’s Mission for Educational Equity

Thanks to TORSH Talent, KIPP DC has not only streamlined its recruitment process but has also fostered a culture of continuous improvement and educational excellence. By investing in both quality hiring and ongoing professional development, KIPP DC continues its mission to ensure every student has access to top-tier educators dedicated to transforming lives through education.

To find out more about how you can use TORSH Talent to streamline your teacher development, book a demo today. 

The post Enhancing Teacher Recruitment and Development at KIPP DC with TORSH Talent appeared first on Torsh.

Take a look at our infographic to discover 7 ways you can use video in your professional learning coaching program.

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TORSH offers an innovative platform to support educator professional learning and coaching. Using TORSH Talent, educators can record their practice, upload the video securely, and then receive time-stamped feedback from a coach, administrator, or even fellow teacher. Interested in learning more about TORSH Talent? Reach out to schedule a conversation with one of our learning experts.

The post 7 Ways to Unlock the Potential of Video for Teacher Professional Learning appeared first on Torsh.

Dr. Meg Franko, Director of Early Childhood Initiatives, Butler Institute for Families, University of Denver, explains during a recent interview, “[Early caregivers and early educators] are the folks who take care of our youngest citizens and who are their earliest teachers, people who help them get ready for the rest of their lives. At the same time, [programs are] in a position where we’re really struggling to get people to enter and stay in the field.”

Research continues to reinforce the incredible impact of early learning programs on student outcomes, from improving school readiness to predicting success after high school graduation. Even K12 administrators recognize that investing in early education is well worth it to cultivate successful student learning. 

To tackle these staffing issues, many programs are finding creative ways to attract and retain high-quality educators in their classrooms. Some partner with high school Career and Technical Education programs to create hands-on opportunities to engage future teachers, while others collaborate with community colleges and workforce development organizations to build the pipeline of qualified candidates.

These strategies prove effective in drawing nascent educators into the field — but what about those already working with children and their families? Recruitment alone does not guarantee ongoing quality and support for early educators as they advance in their careers. 

This is where job-embedded professional development for teachers comes in. 

Table of Contents

• What Is Job-Embedded Professional Development, Exactly?
• Modernizing Professional Development in Early Education
• Four Strategies to Uplevel Job-Embedded Professional Development for Teachers
• Expand Your Job-Embedded Professional Learning Strategies with TORSH

What Is Job-Embedded Professional Development, Exactly?

Despite its growing popularity among early educators, job-embedded training is more than a buzzword. Let’s examine job-embedded professional learning more closely and see how it compares with other approaches to educator development.

Job-embedded learning typically refers to “learning that is grounded in day-to-day practice and is designed to enhance professional practice with the intent of improving children’s learning and development” (Croft et al., 2010). It often relies on teams of education providers collaborating through a variety of methods to identify and solve issues of practice in an ongoing manner. Programs that embrace cycles of continuous learning and improvement lean on this type of professional learning to support their staff.

One example of a job-embedded learning strategy is practice-based coaching, defined by the ECLKC as “a strategy that uses a cyclical process. . . that supports teachers’ use of effective teaching practices that lead to positive outcomes for children.” This model focuses on collaborative, targeted relationships between coaches and teaching staff that center mentorship on specific goals related to practice. 

In contrast, other “traditional” forms of adult learning are often provided as external training (workshops or “PD Days”). But these approaches are far less effective in nurturing shifts in teaching practices than job-embedded professional development for teachers. In their 2020 report, Debra Pacchiano, Ph.D., Rebecca Klein, M.S., and Marsha Shigeyo Hawley, M.Ed. highlight that traditional PD is limited as it:

• Lacks support to assist teachers with applying training information to practice
• Involves minimal to no time for teacher reflection and examining real, relevant problems of practice
• Offers few opportunities for teams to collaborate and learn from each other to support quality teaching practices

According to research examined by the Society for Research in Child Development, job-embedded supports like practice-based coaching have a greater impact and result in more benefits for teachers: “Coaching that supports domain-specific curricula is more successful in improving preschool children’s learning than coaching on general best practices for preschool teaching.”

Modernizing Professional Development in Early Education

The stakes are high for early education providers seeking to uplevel their approaches to teacher professional development. Quality instructional practices can be the difference between a child entering kindergarten, ready to learn in a classroom setting and a student who struggles with learning on day one. 

The consequences of school readiness (or lack of it) cannot be underestimated. In many cases, factors beyond educators’ direct control affect children’s kindergarten preparedness. For instance, socioeconomic gaps and racial inequities affecting families can result in some students entering the classroom already far behind their peers (NCES). More challenging still, gaps in academic performance as early as kindergarten persist even into the upper elementary grade levels (Princiotta & Germino Hausken, 2006).

These data underscore the importance of turning to empirically proven methods of improving teaching practice as the lever educators can maneuver to improve student outcomes. As such, job-embedded learning is all the more crucial for programs to invest time and effort into. 

However, not all job-embedded professional learning is equally impactful. Pacchiano, Klein, and Hawley explain that four key characteristics make these PD strategies most effective in the modern era:

• 1:1 coaching support: As explored earlier, one-off training is insufficient for adult learners to retain new knowledge, let alone apply it in new ways to their teaching. Individualized support like practice-based coaching for early childhood teachers is more effective in shifting practices for the benefit of young students. 
• Upskilling and self-learning: Early educators are busy! When programs offer opportunities for independent professional growth, they allow teachers to bolster their skills and even complete requirements for specific certifications on their own schedules around their many obligations. In particular, online courses work well to lead educators down tailored learning paths based on their learning opportunities or needs.
• Peer-to-peer collaboration: Collaboration can include formal mentorship relationships between colleagues as well as less formal gatherings like lunch-and-learns or professional learning communities (PLCs). Fostering a spirit of collaboration among teachers can boost morale, create space for staff to seek and receive support when needed, and nurture a culture of continuous improvement as a team.
• Data assessment and analysis: Metrics are essential to measure the effectiveness of all three characteristics above. The right data help educators and program administrators alike identify patterns of success and new ways to drive improvements to teaching practices that meet students’ needs.

With these characteristics of successful professional learning in mind, how can early learning organizations efficiently launch or uplevel a job-embedded upskilling program?

Four Strategies to Uplevel Job-Embedded Professional Development for Teachers

1. Invest In The Right Online Learning Platform For Your PD Needs

The first step to expanding and supporting job-embedded professional learning opportunities is identifying the best technology for your programs. The right online learning platform can make all the difference in either helping or hindering your team’s ability to engage in coaching efficiently, provide peer feedback and support, and measure the impact of coaching activities on program goals.

Solutions like the innovative TORSH Talent online learning platform provide all the tools needed to catalyze your job-embedded professional development program — all within your organization’s available resources. 

Let’s take coaching, for example. Teachers leverage TORSH Talent’s video recording features to capture classroom practices live, which they can review ahead of coaching sessions to self-reflect or identify opportunities for growth. In parallel, coaches can also review these recordings, leaving time-stamped feedback for their mentees with specific input related to their coaching goals. When a teacher and their coach next meet, whether it’s in-person or online, these prep steps set them up for a more targeted, productive session. 

These are just a few of the many resources available to early childhood teachers and coaches using TORSH Talent. Ready to learn more? Request a demo to discover how our platform can nurture your coaching practices and teachers’ professional growth as a continuous process. 

Looking for more tips as you search for the right online learning platform to meet your PD needs? Read our recent article for seven key questions every administrator should ask. 

2. Create Multiple Methods for Self-Paced Development

Another critical component of effective job-embedded training is self-learning. Asynchronous opportunities for upskilling give early educators autonomy and practical ways to continue building their teaching effectiveness on their own schedule. Many programs will use solutions like TORSH Talent’s Learning Paths to develop right-sized online modules and courses for:

• Targeted training on specific topics, identified based on program data or opportunities for educator growth sourced from coaching observations
• Certification requirements, either for new or ongoing education (especially helpful for teachers early in their career)
• Other self-paced learning opportunities based on educators’ interests or personal learning goals

The best part about online learning pathways is their flexibility to meet individual educator’s unique needs. For example, TORSH Talent allows administrators to curate which modules educators must complete in order to layer on learning with great intentionality and precision. And with such busy schedules, early childhood teachers appreciate the ability to complete requirements like certifications when and where it’s convenient for them.

When early childhood providers take time to develop self-learning opportunities for their staff, they create conditions for practitioners to improve teaching effectiveness. Further, they encourage a mindset of curiosity among educators, which can greatly encourage them to stay in the field and continue helping young learners grow and thrive.

3. Leverage Hybrid & Virtual Collaboration for Scalability

Like many early education program leaders, you may be exploring hybrid and virtual professional learning methods such as online coaching to stretch limited program dollars and staff resources to the maximum. But there are so many ways technology can support collaboration beyond coaching! 

Consider building peer-to-peer collaboration opportunities in a digital space for early childhood staff. As highlighted earlier, PLCs are a great way to foster peer collaboration. Many programs leverage PLCs that focus on particular challenges with teaching practices within their classrooms. This setup encourages teachers to take ownership of isolating, testing, and measuring changes to program instructional approaches to improve student outcomes. 

TORSH Talent’s Communities feature is the perfect place to launch a virtual PLC or complement an in-person one with online collaboration. This informal tool allows your staff to pose and answer questions among their peers. A comprehensive directory also allows you or PLC leaders to manage membership in specific Sharing Circles around particular topics or challenges.

Learn more about this and other collaboration features available for early childhood educators in TORSH Talent.

4. Gather The Right Data To Guide Continuous Improvement

Even with the best coaching and collaboration practices in place, job-embedded professional learning is nothing without data. After all, the ultimate goal of improving teachers’ effectiveness is to improve students’ learning and growth — which requires measuring the impact of your PD strategies.

Whether you manage a Head Start program working to meet performance standards or a preschool experimenting with a new curriculum, data are essential. Consider how you might synthesize outputs from early childhood assessments, coaching feedback, and more to paint a picture of your program’s effectiveness. What learning outcomes are educators successfully driving in young learners? Where might teachers benefit from additional training or support? 

Additionally, these learning outcomes will inevitably change as a program matures and shifts — and that means building an ongoing process for reviewing and analyzing data becomes critical.

TORSH Talent offers clear reporting and metrics that you can tailor to meet your specific program needs or measure particular goals. Additionally, the platform integrates seamlessly with many LTI-compliant platforms such as Canvas, Blackboard, and Sakai, allowing you to examine multiple data across existing tools to make informed decisions about professional learning and practices. These capabilities underpin a successful cycle of improvement where teachers grow and students thrive.

Expand Your Job-Embedded Professional Learning Strategies with TORSH

TORSH brings a wealth of expertise and experience in effective coaching and job-embedded professional learning for early childhood educators. The innovative TORSH Talent online learning platform is the ideal solution to support and enhance job-embedded professional learning practices within your early education program, with easy-to-use and secure tools to:

• Complete video-based observations
• Provide targeted, specific feedback to early learning educators on their interactions with children and families
• Nurture synchronous and asynchronous collaboration
• Individualize educator coaching and learning
• Give insights to guide professional learning and training

Uplevel your early childhood educator professional development needs with TORSH Talent. Request a demo today!

The post 4 Keys to Using Job-Embedded Professional Development to Develop a Highly Qualified Early Education Workforce appeared first on Torsh.

Problem-solving in a pinch using only that which is available to you has many different names. But no matter how you refer to it, when the outcome exceeds expectations, it becomes something else: a solution worth sharing.

The following is precisely that. 

Sonia M. Rosen, Ph.D., Director of Inquiry and Reflective Practice for the Independent School Teaching Residency Program (ISTR) at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, brought a unique request to us during the early days of the COVID-19 crisis. As a veteran TORSH Talent user, she was looking for a way to extend the platform’s usefulness to improve an annual in-person event that was going virtual in the wake of the pandemic. 

A bit of backstory.

Each year, the department produces a Spring Gathering. During this highly anticipated event, ISTR participants present the one dimension of their practice on which they have done systematic research, collected data, and ultimately identified ways to systematically learn more about their students. This project is a full year in the making, with each teaching fellow presenting their findings to peers, administrators, and others in the program, all with the intention of facilitating peer conversations. Without this year’s in-person event, Dr. Rosen sought the Torsh team’s help to make this year’s event as interactive as possible.

Erin Murphy, Senior Customer Success Manager for Torsh, worked with Rosen through this unique set of circumstances. Her account of the process, from problem to pay off, is outlined below.

Problem: The University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education had to conduct their Spring Gathering presentations virtually due to COVID-19. 

Goal of Spring Gathering: The culmination of the year-long inquiry project for second-year ISTR teaching fellows to present their systematic research. While the presentations are not graded, the goal is to elicit thoughtful conversation and feedback from peers, mentors, and leaders.

Solution: Torsh worked with Dr. Rosen to develop a plan on how ISTR could utilize TORSH Talent to best conduct the Spring Gathering presentations and elicit thoughtful conversation virtually.

We strategized how Groups and Collections features could be used to structure the presentations. 

After a brainstorming session, Torsh provided step-by-step instructions on how the environment was to be set up by an administrator and steps for the presenters to follow to share content. Licenses were easily added using the automated purchasing tool within TORSH Talent to accommodate the additional participants and onlookers. 

The virtual adaptation of ISTR’s Spring Gathering was heralded as a success, with meaningful outcomes such as those cited below:

• The TORSH Talent video-commenting feature allowed participants to provide thoughtful conversation and feedback with one group logging over 1,500 comments of mostly substantive discussion.
  
• According to administrators, TORSH Talent was an easy-to-use solution because of the user-friendly interface. People unfamiliar with the platform were able to get up and running on their own.
  
• Teaching fellows benefited from great feedback, reflection, and the ability to develop content for their portfolios. 

The fruitful discussions, thanks to the TORSH commenting tool, are sure to play a significant role as the Summer and Fall curriculum is expected to be online, which will expand the number of users to include mentors, program directors, fellows, and Penn faculty. Lectures and content will be available for fellows to watch on the front end of any asynchronous teaching and also on the back end for enrichment. And as administrators look to next year’s Spring Gathering, the valuable lessons learned from going virtual have already been added to the event.  

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The authors of the paper, Dan Goldhaber (National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER) and Center for Education Data and Research (CEDR) at the University of Washington) and Matthew Ronfeldt (University of Michigan) provide insights and strategies to support professional development through the use of virtual training and mentoring, along with other tactics to minimize the teacher shortage that was already an issue prior to the pandemic. 

As a former educator in public and charter schools, with experience on the policy side of education, and now in my role at Torsh working with Higher Ed Teacher Prep programs, I found this brief to be especially relevant in current times. After discussing with colleagues our thoughts on the topic, I wanted to share some highlights from those conversations and from my own experiences.

Goldhaber and Ronfeldt break down the issue into two segments:

• Student teaching placements influence teacher effectiveness. If student teaching experiences are constrained by the pandemic, teacher candidates may lose valuable experiences and schools may lose the opportunity to shape and evaluate prospective hires.
• Teacher preparation programs and student teaching experiences play a major role in determining where candidates take job placements, in ways that can influence both job markets and staffing shortages.

Prior to the pandemic, there was already a teacher shortage in the United States, which is on its way to becoming a full-blown crisis. In a list of facts about the teaching profession compiled by the U.S. Department of Education, 50% of new teachers leave the profession within five years., Many teachers have made the decision to opt-out of teaching this year (for a variety of reasons, but health concern is a repeat topic). We cannot afford to interrupt the pipeline of new teachers nor can we afford to put under-prepared teachers in classrooms if we are going to ensure that future generations have the access to the high-quality education that they deserve. Student-teachers need field experience and educator preparation programs need to feel confident in the quality of the coaching and mentoring that their students in the field will continue to receive, without having concern around sending observers into classrooms. This is where technology comes into play.

Technology for Teachers in Training

One of the main strategies the brief recommends for tackling the current issue is online practice. According to the research, “teachers and teachers-in-training who participate in online practice teaching see significant improvements in teaching skills.” From seasoned veterans to bright-eyed graduates, all teachers are being asked to fundamentally change the way that they manage their classroom and deliver content, and there is strength in seeking help and practicing new skills to ensure teachers are prepared for their students. 

With the abundance of available technology, from TORSH Talent to Nearpod and beyond, teachers can practice executing remote lessons and then share those lessons with their peers for feedback. Even if a school does not have a traditional coaching structure, it is vital to use the available tools to facilitate cooperation and collaboration as everyone tries to tackle new problems.

Coaching Remains Critical

The authors also emphasize that school systems can strategize by “[providing] in-service supports for new teachers whose student teaching experiences were interrupted or incomplete.” As mentioned in the brief, effective mentoring will be determined by the quantity and duration of the mentoring, and the qualifications of the mentor teachers. Again, this is where technology plays an essential role. Tools that facilitate full coaching structures can allow programs to provide aligned feedback to teachers and work to norm and develop mentors and coaches for both in-person and remote environments in a way that does not cause disruption, regardless of geographical constraints. 

Two more insights that Annenberg points out around strategies to consider are that “stronger partnerships between teacher preparation providers and remote districts have the potential to bring significant benefits…for districts facing staffing shortages” and “student teachers present an important pool of additional talent for schools, [so] creative deployment of student teachers could provide a major boost as the COVID-19 crisis continues”

When I participated in Johns Hopkins’ online Masters of Education, I saw firsthand how universities are expanding their reach to attract students beyond the traditional confines of geography. Remote tools like those used by Johns Hopkins’ online learning program reaches and serves students in all 50 states. Partnerships between teacher preparation providers and remote districts are not only beneficial for potential increased staffing but also for learning best-practices; K-12 schools can leverage their connections with universities to learn from professors who have experience delivering remote instruction. 

Adapting for Success

It is important to note that we must avoid certain strategies as well when tackling these issues. All programs must be adapting right now to support teachers in this new environment. If you are not adapting, then you, your teachers, and your students are falling behind. Now, more than ever, we cannot waste time and resources on strategies that do not work. This brief highlights the following insights on strategies to avoid:

• Low-quality teacher mentoring programs, as well as those that are not sustained across multiple years, are likely to be ineffective.
• Teacher effectiveness might show up differently in an online setting – so relying on past measures of teacher quality will likely be insufficient.

How schools at all levels, from early education through K-12, and up to universities, support educators during this contentious time will have long-term effects on their ability to hire and retain educators, and on student success. Considering strategies that can support teacher training during this time, and maximizing benefits using technology, can help sway these long-term effects in the right direction.

Andy Webber serves as the Business Development Manager focusing on our Higher Education clients at Torsh. Andy, a former teacher, holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Texas and an M.S. of Education from Johns Hopkins University (where he first used TORSH as an educator). Andy is excited to combine his experience as an educator and as a TORSH user to deliver individually tailored packages that meet the needs of Higher Education clients’ to improve educational outcomes for all students.

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Upload this year’s videos!

Since you took the time to make videos to showcase your practice within the classroom, now is a great time to upload those materials onto TALENT if you haven’t already done so. Keep in mind…summer is the season when smartphones and even iPads land in lakes and pools or at the bottom of soggy beach bags. Don’t take a chance on losing your valuable videos. Get them uploaded!  

Edit Your Videos Into Bite-Sized PD Clips
The most powerful and effective videos are usually the shortest ones. Make sure your videos focus on one topic or concentration. Instead of adding the entire lesson, clip the video down to 3-4 minutes ideally, or at most 15 minutes. Add time-synced comments, to highlight relevant parts of the video. Showcase these videos during summer PD sessions! To learn how to create a clip, check out our FAQ, How do I edit my video’s length?

Curate your Exemplar Library Videos

The exemplar library is a powerful tool on TALENT that enables the sharing of best practice videos among colleagues, or throughout your network. But a school’s exemplar library only has value if there is content. You’ve uploaded and edited your videos, now be sure that they can be easily found and viewed by your colleagues. An exemplar library, if it’s to serve as a truly effective teacher professional development tool, must be well-organized and accessible. We recommend organizing videos into channels and sorting them by subject, focus and Common Core Domains when appropriate.

Use TALENT for Hiring And/Or Teacher Training

Sometimes hiring gets done in the summer. If that’s on your plate, then TALENT can help. Use TALENT to give candidates a glimpse inside your classrooms. Record their interviews and share them with other colleagues who will potentially be working with them, to gain feedback from all members of your team. Or, share videos and ask a candidate to give their thoughts, ideas and feedback on videos in your library. This is a  great way to test their understanding of what is working or not working in the classroom, and can help you gain valuable insight into their strengths and weaknesses.

Engage in Self-Reflection and Growth

You’ve been faithfully videotaping your practice all year long. Have you had the chance to review your videos, to reflect on your practice and pinpoint areas for improvement? Sometimes these activities are more feasible once the dust has settled on the school year. The pace slows down, and you have time to truly focus. “How were my interactions with students?” “How can I connect the teaching I’m seeing here with effective teaching practices?” “How successful was I in implementing new curriculum?” “Was I able to successfully engage struggling students?” The opportunities for self-reflection are endless, and summer provides some much-needed time for self-reflection.

Educate Yourself On How Talent Can Work For You This school year we launched Coaching Corner and a variety of new tools and functionality. Summer is an ideal time to get caught up on what’s new with TALENT, and determine how you can best use TALENT in your teacher professional development efforts.  We recommend you peruse the “Resources” section of our website, which has a number of materials that may be helpful. But if that’s not enough, we are more than happy to walk you through a TALENT demo, so you can become fully conversant in all the ways this powerful platform can help you achieve growth in your teaching practice. If you’re a current customer, reach out to your account manager or through the Contact Support button in TALENT. Or if you’re still thinking about TALENT, sign up for a demo today!

The post Spice Up Your Summer Professional Development and Training with TALENT appeared first on Torsh.

Fortunately, there are schools such as Rocketship Spark Academy that are working to level the playing field. A free public charter elementary school in San Jose, CA, Spark delivers the highest quality education to underserved elementary students who would not otherwise have access to top-notch schools. They are both a Torsh client and a member of the Rocketship Education non-profit charter network. The team at Spark is working tirelessly to bridge the achievement gap, and we are proud to feature them in this week’s Client Spotlight. 

Rocketship Spark Academy was founded in 2013 and today has over 590 students in kindergarten through fifth grade. 76% of the student body is considered “socioeconomically disadvantaged.” These are the students who typically attend poorly-ranked public schools, and who see a corresponding failure to achieve based on standardized test scores and other metrics. Spark offers these kids and their parents an alternative to their local public school. The lucky “Rocketeers,” students who are chosen at random by lottery to attend Spark, are seeing incredible results: Spark’s students are ranked #1 in both math and ELA across all 15 schools in the Franklin-McKinley School District. 

What is the secret to Spark’s obvious success? Their model is built on three pillars: Excellent Teachers and Leaders, Personalized Learning, and Engaged Parents. The first pillar is where Torsh is making an impact through Torsh TALENT, our teacher professional development platform. TALENT serves as a valuable coaching tool for the staff at Spark, assisting them with teacher training and allowing teachers to constantly improve upon their teaching practice through regular coaching. Spark is also using TALENT to record teachers in the classroom to build an exemplar library, where examples of great teaching techniques can be reviewed and shared. These best practices can be disseminated throughout the organization to give teachers new and better ideas for how best to reach their students. 

Spark Academy and the other schools in the Rocketship Education network have a stated goal to “eliminate the achievement gap in our lifetime.” That’s an incredibly ambitious mission. To make it happen, they must recruit the very best teachers, and provide those educators with the best training and professional development tools available. We at Torsh feel very honored that they have partnered with us to achieve their aims. Together with schools like Spark, we’ll continue to foster high-quality learning environments for our country’s most underserved kids. 

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Back in 2011, Sand Hill School opened its doors thanks to a combination of vision and philanthropy. The vision was provided in part by Rosalie Whitlock, the Executive Director of the Children’s Health Council (CHC). CHC, a non-profit that specializes in ADHD, Learning Differences, Anxiety/Depression and Autism, has been serving kids and families in the greater San Francisco area for over 60 years. Ms. Whitlock, together with Cindy Lopez, who currently serves as Head of School, recognized the need within the community for a school like Sand Hill. Their idea required initial funding, which fortunately came from philanthropists, education advocates and long-time CHC supporters, John and Betsy Kriewall. 

The initial student body consisted of seven students. By 2013, the school was serving 47 students in K-5. Today, it serves about 70 students in grades 1-8. 

Many kids arrive at Sand Hill frustrated and disillusioned. Their learning differences, often combined with attention and social challenges and other conditions such as anxiety, are inhibiting their success in the classroom and squelching their excitement about school. Sand Hill offers these bright and highly capable kids a unique, specialized program, which es their individual needs in ways that traditional schools do not. Instructors are trained in best practices for educating kids with conditions such as dyslexia. A six to one student ratio and access to skilled occupational therapists, speech and language pathologists and psychologists also contribute to student success. 

The school has developed what they call the “Sand Hill Approach.” A research-based curriculum, focus on social and emotional skills and the development of executive function, access to technology, and an emphasis on family partnerships are all important facets. The goals of the program include instilling kids with self-confidence, reigniting a love of learning, and ultimately preparing each student to return to a traditional classroom, where they can not just survive, but truly thrive. 

And, the program is working. Last year,  85% of students at Sand Hill School met their personalized academic goals in mathematics problem-solving, while 90% of students met their goals in reading comprehension. 

We especially love Sand Hill’s unwavering belief in their students’ potential. As the school’s website puts it, “Sand Hill students are the future visionaries, entrepreneurs and creative thinkers of the next generation who will shape the future of the Silicon Valley and beyond.” Such an empowering message helps fuel student growth and achievement. Students at Sand Hill learn to expect great things from themselves. We are so proud to play a role in this vibrant and transformative school community, and we look forward to seeing how Sand Hill alumni will ultimately contribute to society at large. 

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This conference brings together stakeholders in teacher preparation that use or are planning to implement edTPA. Last year, Torsh TALENT, our online professional development platform, became an official integrated edTPA platform provider, which is something that makes us very proud. That’s why Courtney is not just attending the conference, he’s also a featured speaker. 

Courtney’s presentation will highlight how schools can integrate TALENT with their certification programs, making the process easier and more streamlined. Courtney will use New York University as a case study and demonstrate how they use the edTPA tools in Torsh TALENT for their teacher residency program. To receive certification, teachers assemble a portfolio of materials such as lesson plans, student work, other artifacts, and videos of their classroom instruction. Teachers can create and store their portfolios right on Torsh TALENT, share their work with professors, colleagues, and mentors to receive feedback, then submit the final version directly to Pearson, the organization that scores their work. This organizes the process and allows students to receive valuable feedback on the work they are submitting. 

Courtney very much looks forward to sharing how TALENT works with edTPA; he will also certainly enjoy connecting with faculty and staff involved in teacher preparation programs. We hope that access to tools such as TALENT will make it easier to adopt edTPA and will contribute to a more universal certification that elevates the teaching profession.

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NYU partners with school districts nationwide to select candidates for a new program called EMAT which stands for Embedded Master of Arts in Teaching for secondary education. It’s a 13-month residency program whereby resident interns complete online coursework and get real-world in-classroom teaching experience. The goal is to advance career preparedness on Day 1, but they don’t go at it alone. NYU and their partner, HotChalk, an education technology company that puts degree programs online, set out to find a video partner that would connect remote resident interns to the expert faculty guidance of NYU’s staff. 

After reviewing several potential solutions, Ilana Levinson, Manager of Academic Technology Services at NYU Steinhardt, said she found the ‘Porsche’ of video-based observation tools in Torsh TALENT and a strategic partnership was formed. Not only does Torsh TALENT integrate seamlessly with their in-house system, Ember, but the breadth of offerings including tracking coaching data goes far beyond basic video capture. Resident interns can record classroom time, upload to TALENT and leave self-reflection notes that tie back directly to specific moments in the video. Along the same lines, NYU instructors and mentors participate in ongoing two-way feedback working with students one-on-one and in small groups as they sharpen their skills throughout the program.

Our partnership with NYU for its EMAT program started in Summer of 2016. Due to its early success, other departments quickly became interested. Within a few months, NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development signed up to use the system for its own on-campus programs.

We are thrilled to welcome NYU to the Torsh TALENT family. We look forward to growing our partnership and building upon our mutual commitment to improve higher education. 

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