Professional Learning

Our primary strategy for increasing student achievement is to arm the educators – teachers, principals, school administrators and parents (children’s first teachers) – with the tools they need to best teach the children and adolescents in the Greater New Orleans region.

• We provide training sessions and ongoing, job-embedded support to increase educators’ knowledge and skills so that they can more effectively meet the unique needs of every student.

• We teach educators leadership skills so that they can communicate their lessons-learned to other educators and parents.

• We work with national and local experts to develop and disseminate the best practices on teaching and learning in the classroom and the home.

CDL professional development follows a student-driven, ongoing process:

Professional learning consists of a combination of institutes, seminars and sessions that are followed by job-embedded study groups, mentoring, coaching, modeling in classrooms, and individual consultation.  Throughout the professional learning spectrum, CDL provides ongoing support.  For example, as part of our literacy initiative, in addition to facilitating professional learning on literacy strategies and tactics, we assist with assessment, data collection/entry, student grouping, curriculum design and group scheduling.  In addition, CDL provides the critical piece to program success - teacher observation, evaluation and feedback.

CDL’s professional development is implemented by a cadre of specialists including reading and literacy specialists, math specialists, learning specialists, psychologists, speech and language pathologists and national educational experts.