Professional Development Program
Zula’s professional development program provides guidelines, interactive exploration/dialogue, modeling, and hands-on investigation supporting STEM and an inquiry-based approach to teaching and learning.
Sessions position teaching and learning as individualized, cross-curricular, and multi-sensory experiences for children based on diverse learning styles and abilities – including special needs. They model a deeply collaborative relationship between children and educators, and between educators and families.
Zula’s expert team will collaborate with you to develop a customized training that is tailored to meet the individual needs of educators, trainers, curriculum coordinators, directors, and administrators. All trainings will provide strategies to boost educator’s attitudes and teaching skills as well as academic achievement for all students. Zula provides ongoing support for the continued success of both educators and students.
Student Assessment
Guidelines for conducting ongoing assessment of individual and collective progress are included. Participants are taught how ongoing inquiry-based STEM outcomes can be incorporated back into the teaching process.
Teacher Assessment
Guidelines are provided for educators and program leaders to reflect upon ongoing inquiry-based instruction techniques, open-ended dialogue, and an integrated approach to STEM and language arts.
Training Goals
- Understand how to incorporate an inquiry-based foundation to teaching and learning
- Understand how to incorporate Zula STEM modules easily and seamlessly with existing curriculum/teaching practices
- Become motivated and empowered to act as guides and facilitators in the classroom – using an open-ended, child-directed approach to teaching
- Understand a multidisciplinary, integrated approach to teaching
- Understand how to extend STEM and language arts from the classroom to the home, neighborhood, and community environments
- Understand how to incorporate media literacy and 21st century thinking skills
- Learn effective use of evaluation tools to assess children’s ongoing concept understanding, through traditional, performance-based, and portfolio-based assessments