A dozen suggestions to improve school district inservice programs are made. (1) Bring a university program to the district; the teachers and administrators who participate will pay for it and earn college credits on their own time. (2) Be sure to provide some time for people to meet by grade level or subject area. (3) Use teachers as presenters…

Two elementary schools in White Plains, New York, have been involved in the Child Development Project (CDP) since 1991. This paper describes how the staffs and administrators built caring communities into their schools. The paper is written from the perspective of a staff developer who became a district coordinator for staff development. The paper…

A description is given of a staff development program designed to bridge the gap between regular teachers and teachers of gifted children. The program is based on the following concepts: (1) teachers must be provided with practical ideas that can be put into place immediately in the classroom; (2) teachers must feel ownership of their own…

Offered in this paper are guidelines and procedures to follow for introducing a newspaper-in-education program in the schools. Included are outlines and activities for idea presentation and staff development, suggestions for use of the newspaper in a scavenger hunt, and newspaper workshop ideas. Also included are activity sheets for use in…

An overview is presented of the beginning teacher program in the Frederick County (Maryland) schools. The focus of the program is on three concerns: (1) the problems of beginning teachers as perceived by themselves and others; (2) the kinds of support efforts that presently exist; and (3) implications for the future development of support programs…

A survey of 800 public school educators in New Hampshire revealed inconsistencies between staff development goals and practices. While teachers and administrators agreed on program goals, they disagreed on how effectively staff development projects meet individual needs. Differences between inservice activities and staff development activities…

As one means of serving their clients, Ginn and Co. made a commitment in the early 1980's to provide inservice workshops for teachers that more closely related to customer needs. The vehicle for assessing these needs and ultimately designing appropriate inservice activities is Stages of Concern about the Innovation (SoC), one of the diagnostic…

Both the current concern over student reading achievement and the recognition that the teacher is the key to excellence in reading instruction indicate the necessity for school-based teacher-training programs. This paper discusses a staff-development program in Palm Beach County, Florida, and includes an outline of the necessary teacher…

The staff development model described in this paper involves collaborative planning in which the teachers are involved, while also providing a mechanism to assist participants to identify their inservice needs. The model consists of three major components: (1) the preliminary input of a selected committee which produces a needs assessment survey;…

A description is given of the development and implementation of an inservice program, "Project Excel," which was designed in accordance with andragogical theory. This theory is based upon four major assumptions: (1) as people grow, they become increasingly self-directed; (2) as people grow, a reservoir of experiences which provide a…

The Model Teacher Induction Project (MTIP) is a research model program for the induction of beginning teachers. The program is being field tested along with a satellite project aimed at building and studying similar staff development programs. This paper reports on what has been learned from the MTIP and its satellite effort. A review of research…

Findings of a study that explored the role of staff developers in integrating staff development with organizational development are presented in this paper. Staff development (SD) is defined as professional development for individuals to improve student instruction; organizational development (OD) is defined as professional development for groups…

Since 1979 collaborative activities in continuing education for human services workers in Montana have shown that combining training efforts among agencies and higher education units provides better instruction at a considerable savings in cost and particularly suits rural agencies with small training budgets and small, widely dispersed staffs.…

When a program for gifted children in Massillon, Ohio, was being developed, the planning team built into the program proposal a provision for staff development for classroom teachers. The goal of this training of third through sixth grade classroom teachers was to facilitate the bridging experience for the identified gifted students and to provide…

Alternatives for revitalizing the programs and management of student services in community colleges are reviewed in this paper. First, alternatives related to student services programs are considered, including: (1) the increased use of computer-assisted counseling to integrate student services more fully with mainstream academic activities; (2)…