Resources

Teachers and administrators in independent charter schools tend to wear multiple hats and have enormous workloads. Most independent charters are small. Many are geographically isolated. And a good number are struggling financially; just meeting the monthly payroll can be difficult.

All too often, opportunities for high-quality professional development in this context are minimal or nonexistent.

WestEd’s Charter School Teachers Online (CSTO) project is working to advance professional development opportunities for charter school teachers.

Moving professional development online is key to CSTO’s approach to overcoming the geographic and cost constraints of reaching charter school teachers. CSTO builds on an extensive online library of education resources from another WestEd project, Doing What Works (DWW). School districts can access the material free of charge at the DWW website (www.dww.ed.gov).

CSTO is developing and facilitating eight online professional development courses, each spanning four to seven weeks. Five of the courses are designed to give charter school teachers strategies they can use to boost middle and high school students’ reading comprehension.

The courses cover topics ranging from ways to more effectively lead discussions on textbook material and teach new vocabulary in the classrooms, to strategies for teaching to the Common Core State Standards for reading.

Download this article to read more about CSTO.