A regional school association funds a program for assisting teachers
Scenario 1: A regional school association funds a program for assisting teachers to implement new content
standards in literacy for grades one through five. The design of the program includes three one-day workshops
for selected teachers from each district in the region over a period of nine months. In addition, literacy coaches
have been assigned to work with those teachers after each of the workshops. The expectation is that as a
result of these workshops specific instructional practices will be adopted, including more use of technology in
the instructional process. After the first workshop, through informal observations and feedback from the
coaches and some of the teachers, it was found that at least two of the instructional practices teachers were
expected to use did not work with the children in their classes. In fact, if anything, these practices created more
confusion related to basic skills. In addition, there was resistance from a small percentage of the schools
involved, primarily from the principals, at having the literacy coaches involved in the project at all. Although it
was not said directly, these principals appeared not to like the idea of “outsiders” coming into their schools. In
addition, a number of the schools were having problems adopting the technology-based instructional tools
either because of the lack of teachers’ skills, and/or the availability of the technical tools needed. Review
chapter nine and explain what has happened in this scenario.
Week 5/Chapter 10
Scenario 2: In training staff on the use of a new online instructional system, Christina wonders if staff will ever
be able to apply what she has been teaching them. Part of the problem is that very few of the participants are
able to attend the training sessions on a regular basis due to other pressing responsibilities that are a part of
their regular workload. And, even though there is an online review and tutorial system available to them, many
of them have noted that this learning resource is not very well designed and therefore not very useful. In
addition, they are finding it difficult to both learn this new online system while at the same time making the
necessary changes to the content of the current courses they are teaching and getting the courses moved to
the new system. Christiana is very frustrated with what is happening, and decides she needs to talk with their
supervisors to see if there is any way the start-up of this new system can be delayed for at least a month or two
to ensure that the instructors are ready to use it effectively. Assuming that her supervisors approve a two
month delay, what must Christina do to solve the program’s problems?
