Program: Scarsdale Teachers Institute
Audience: K-5
Dates: 10/8/2026 to 12/10/2026
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This course is designed to build teacher leadership and instructional capacity by preparing educators to plan, facilitate, and reflect on professional learning workshops connected to high-impact literacy and workshop practices.
Participants will engage in a series of professional learning experiences that mirror the structure of performance-based assessment: they will study a high-impact workshop topic, apply the learning to their own classroom practice, design a professional learning experience for colleagues, facilitate that workshop during the school day, and reflect on the impact of their work.
Rather than demonstrating learning through a traditional assignment, teachers will show evidence of their growth through the authentic performance task of leading adult learners around a focused instructional practice in Scarsdale. In preparation for the workshop, teachers will meet with the ELA Coordinator to research and refine their topic, analyze student needs and classroom examples, plan models or demonstrations, create resources for colleagues, and anticipate questions or challenges that may arise.
Through this process, teachers will develop leadership skills such as facilitation, communication, instructional decision-making, collaboration, reflection, and the ability to translate theory into practical classroom application. At the same time, preparing to teach colleagues will deepen and solidify the participants' own instructional practice, as they will need to clarify their thinking, gather evidence from their classrooms, and refine strategies before presenting them to others. As a result, teachers will leave the course with both a strengthened classroom practice and a completed leadership project that supports professional learning across the district.
Aside from the two required in-person meetings, all coursework will be completed asynchronously.