Info for education by design registrants

Education Programs

Workshops for Educators

Education By Design^TM
Institutes

Workshop for EBD
Practitioners

Registration Information

Tips for the collaborative
classroom

Meeting Design & Facilitation

Corporate/Non-Profit Programs

Corporate Workshops

Wilderness Programs

About Leading Edge

Staff Bios/Institute Coordinators

Newsletter/Discussion Group
Signup

Our Clients

Privacy Statement

Home

Copyright 2003 Leading EDGE LLC
195 Burdick Medbury Road
Norwich, NY 13815
(607) 334-EDGE(3343)
bruce@realworldlearning.info

How to Enroll - The EBD Institute Experience - Expectations

Leading EDGE LLC offers professional development programs for educators. How Can I Enroll in a Workshop or EBD Institute? Virtually all our workshops and institutes are offered through Schools or BOCES. To enroll in one you need to work with your school district or BOCES professional development staff to have them sponsor it. Check our Calendar for upcoming events! (enrollment subject to space available).

Over the years, educators have reported that their workshop or institute experience with us has been among the most engaging, productive, and challenging staff development opportunities they have ever had. We are gratified by this high praise and certainly hope you will feel the same. To further that end, we want to share a few insights that will help prepare you for your learning experience.

What does an EBD Level I institute "look like, sound like, and feel like"? The Level I institute experience is designed to introduce you to the Education By Design Classroom ^TM model and prepare you to begin implementing it in your own learning environment at a novice level. EBD Institutes are:

- Outcomes Driven: All aspects of the institute experience are designed to move you toward the stated outcomes for a Level I institute. As part of this design, you may be exploring ideas that may challenge some of your own firmly held beliefs about teaching and learning. This exploration is central to the purpose of our institute. It is crucial that you approach your institute experience with an open mind.

- Experiential: Your experience will be highly interactive. You will be immersed in the same classroom model we use with our students. You will learn much more by doing than by sitting and listening. Everything we do with you in the institute is a strategy, tool, or technique that has proven highly successful with students K-12.

- Collaborative: You will work frequently as a member of a collaborative problem-solving team. There will be times when you may be interacting with people with whom you disagree. This may produce a certain degree of frustration that is quite normal. Be prepared to exercise patience with diverse thinking and the needs of people whose learning style differs from your own.

- Problem based: You will learn about the EBD classroom by doing "challenges." These challenges are relatively complex "problems-to-solve" which will help you to understand the "curriculum" of our classroom model as well as become familiar with the skills, tools, and techniques you will be teaching your students. Because of the complex nature of challenges you will be given, there may be times when the "solution" to the challenge is not immediately clear. For some folks this is disconcerting. Be prepared to stretch your tolerance of ambiguity.

What will be expected of me as an institute participant?

- Please plan to attend each session for its full duration. We do recognize that all of us have on-going lives during the time of the institute. Nonetheless, moving in and out of the institute or attending only selected days is highly disruptive to the development of the "community" spirit that supports this experience. - Unless you are notified otherwise, please be ready to start promptly at 8:00 am and finish at 4:00 pm each day of the institute

- In many cases, the host institution sponsoring your institute will provide snacks and lunch for you each day. Please check that this is the case with your institute.

- Education By Design^TM will provide you with a 3-ring binder, a manual, and a variety of handouts during your institute. You will want to bring along a small notebook and pen or pencil.

- We encourage you to wear very comfortable, relaxed, casual clothing.

- There may be a limited amount of outside "homework" during your institute. We will try to keep it to a minimum.

Many institute participants have told us, "I have never laughed so loud, learned so much, or worked so hard in any other staff development workshop." We know that we do not produce such powerful learning experiences in isolation. Collaborative learning requires that all the parties - instructors and participants - accept their fair share of the burden of responsibility for successful learning. For our part, we pledge our best effort to provide you with an outstanding staff development experience that is engaging, challenging, professionally useful, and "safe" for real learning and collaboration.

More information relating to specific program format and content is available under "Program Info" in the sidebar at left.