getting started

Professional Development Credit

If you are an educator looking for "on-demand" professional development, you have come to the right place. Before you look over the Teacher-to-Teacher menu of course offerings, review the steps below. This will help you select courses to meet your needs.

Step 1.  Identify Professional
Development Need

Based on the needs of the students you have recently taught or will be teaching in the future, identify an area for professional growth. For example, if your students have scored below target in reading comprehension, you may be looking for some new instructional strategies to assist students to better understand what they read. In this case, you might choose the course, Looking at Vocabulary. A complete listing of available courses can be found at www.paec.org/teacher2teacher/. Simply click on the content area to find a complete listing.

Step 2.  Course Credit

In most states, educators have several options for renewing their professional certification. Earning professional development credit, sometimes referred to as inservice or continuing education, is one of those options. If you desire to obtain credit for taking a course on the Teacher-to-Teacher (T2T) website, please contact your local professional development office for guidelines specific to your area or state. 49 states now give credit or continuing hours for the Teacher-to-Teacher courses. The following link www.paec.org/teacher2teacher/map.html provides specific information about your state. The information on the T2T website provides course objectives, activities, assessments, and resources to assist you in documenting your participation in the course. However, you may also need to meet local requirements such as obtaining prior approval from your local professional development office if you want the credit to apply toward renewal of your teaching certificate or other professional credentials.

Step 3.  Watching the Streaming Videos

For every Teacher-to-Teacher course there is an:

Overview

Course Component

Video, including embedded activities

Video Companion Guide

Course Handouts

Follow-up Activities

End-of-course Assessment

Principal's Implementation Checklist

Professional Development Coordinator Feedback Form

Additional Resources

You'll be able to access each of these sections, including the video, through your computer. To view the video, you'll need a high speed internet connection and the latest version of Windows Media Player, which you can download at the Microsoft website for both Windows and Macintosh users. You'll also need Adobe Reader to view some of the other sections. Download free Adobe Reader.

Step 4.  Successful Completion

After viewing a Teacher-to-Teacher video course, an assessment is provided that you must complete to receive official notification of course completion. This official notification will verify that you have completed 2 hours of professional development; however, local guidelines must be followed in order for the credit to apply toward recertification of your teaching certificate or other professional credentials. Visit www.paec.org/teacher2teacher/map.html for state-specific details.

Step 5.  Follow-up

As you know from your experience as a teacher, information becomes knowledge only when applied. To maximize your experience of the T2T program, it is highly recommended that participants complete the follow-up activities offered for each video course. These activities, which give you the opportunity to apply the course information in the classroom, can be downloaded from the course menu.

You may even earn additional professional development credit for completing the follow-up activities, again depending on local guidelines. The amount of professional development credit awarded for completion of follow-up activities will be determined by your local professional development office. For example, if you completed the follow-up activities in 8 hours, guidelines in some states would allow 8 points to be awarded. Completing the course and all suggested activities takes approximately 10 hours.

Step 6.  Resources

Links to websites, listings of journal articles, and related reference books are provided to assist you in setting up teacher study groups, action research projects, or other professional opportunities for the purpose of digging deeper into the topic areas addressed by the video courses.