9453152 Willis This Local Systemic Change project will target the entire population of K-8 teachers in 44 schools in the New Jersey districts of East Orange and Jersey City. Through a program of summer institutes, an experimental Living Laboratory for practice teaching and peer mentoring, school year outreach activities and teacher run in service workshops, the enhancement program will: expand teacher knowledge of subject matter, increase understanding of inquiry-based and process-oriented techniques, promote the integration of SMT with other portions of the curriculum, increase teacher confidence in teaching and develop teacher leaders to institutionalize the program beyond the grant period. The first cohort of 120 teachers will receive 120 hours of staff development in the first year. 30 teachers from the first year will return a second year to become teacher leaders. The goal is to reach 540 to 570 teachers directly over the five years (the exact number will depend on repeats) The rest of the K-8 teachers will be reached by the Consortia staff and Outreach teams working in close cooperation with school teams, to bring regular inservice activities into all the schools in both districts, for at least 100 hours over the five years of the project. The curriculum in the schools will be selected from nationally validated instructional programs, in particular Science and Technology for Children. The request is for $2,855,398 with cost share estimated at $1,046,585 (37%).
