Professional Development

At Pacific Learning, we believe in supporting educators through improving instructional excellence and student achievement. We offer many types of professional development to help meet the needs of your school or district.

Customized On-Site Professional Development
Product Implementation Training
Professional Resources
Professional Conference Presentations/Regional Workshops
Professional Authors

Customized On-Site Professional Development

Instructional Assessment
Pacific Learning’s customized professional development starts with collecting data to determine needs. Through discussions with key stakeholders and teachers, and through classroom walk-throughs for observation, our trained consultants provide you with information about instructional delivery. This data then helps shape the professional development plan focused on the particular needs in your school or district.

The instructional assessment part of the process helps to:

Gather data through classroom observations
Determine frequency of use of best practices
Facilitate teachers analyzing their own instructional data

Job-embedded Classroom Coaching
Proven Results – Dramatic gains in student achievement after classroom coaching!

Looking for professional development to make dramatic gains in student performance? Job-Embedded Classroom Coaching is right for you. Through our Job-Embedded Classroom Coaching, a professional consultant works with administrators and teachers to identify instructional needs, coach teachers, and target instruction toward student needs.

Scaffolds teachers to support individual student needs
Provides strategies for effective instructional delivery
Encourages teacher self-reflection

Our coaching model demonstrates how it works.

How to determine if Job-embedded coaching is right for your school or district:
Job-embedded coaching can last anywhere from 1 week to 1year depending on your needs and the number of teachers participating.

The first step in finding out if this is right for your school or district is speaking with a Pacific Learning representative to help determine your general needs.
Next, Pacific Learning matches a trained consultant with your needs and a phone conference is scheduled for the consultant to dig deeper so that he/she can develop a Professional Development coaching plan.
A proposal with plan details and costs will then be drafted for your review.
After the plan is fine-tuned and agreed upon, the work begins based on the approximate dates outlined in the proposal.
Overall costs include a fee per day and travel expenses for the consultant. Pacific Learning will help make the travel as cost-effective for you as possible.

Enhancing Classroom Practice (full-day or half-day) Workshops/Institutes

Any combination of the topics below can be tailored into half- or full-day workshops.

Guided Reading
Shared Reading
Using Comprehension Strategies Across the Content Areas
Assessment to Drive Instruction
Effective Whole Class Instruction
Content Area Literacy Instruction
Integrating Technology Into Instruction
Supporting ELLs and Struggling Readers
Differentiating Instruction
Balancing Your Literacy Program
Incorporating Parent Involvement Programs Focused on Literacy Needs

We ask that dates chosen be consecutive when possible to save you costs.

Product Implementation Training

On-site Full- or Half-Day Implementation Training
Free, full-day of implementation training included with product purchases of $20,000 or more.

We know how important it is to kick off new resources without a hitch! That’s why we offer support to help you get teachers started and motivated incorporating new resources into your existing curriculum. Included with most product packages are Teacher Resource Books and/or Product Overview videos. However, the best way to motivate staff to use (and to effectively use) a new resource is to have one of our trained, professional consultants on site to provide:

Background about the product including why it’s effective and how it’s going to help
A detailed walk-through of all product components with demonstrations and modeling of lessons
Hands-on practice and reflection

Training is structured and customized based on the size and the needs of your staff. Normally trainings are structured through a combination or whole group and small group staff interaction, in addition to individual reflection and practice.

Our consultants tie in effective teaching strategies and methods throughout the training. Beyond learning HOW to effectively integrate our products, your teachers will learn additional strategies on which the products are based. For example, if you would like full-day training for staff regarding Pacific Learning’s CSI resource, you have the option of including any additional professional development topics:

Effectively integrating comprehension strategies across the curriculum
Interactive whole group instruction
Integrating technology into instruction
Setting up successful cooperative learning groups
Observing and assessing student progress and program effectiveness

Online Implementation Training (customized)
Free with orders of $10,000 or more.

1-hour Customized and Live Sessions: Train over 100 educators in a live, customized online session to introduce and kick-off the integration of new resources into your curriculum.

We’ll work with you to design a 1-hour session tailored to the needs of your school or district.

Professional Resources

A Guide to Facilitating Teacher Reflection by Jan Rozelle
A Teachers’ Guide to Genre Grades 3-8 by Noel Ridge
Reciprocal Teaching at Work by Lori Oczkus

Professional Conference Presentations/Regional Workshops

Several authors and consultants present at international, national, and regional conference sessions. We’ll keep you up to date about where they are! If you would like to schedule a local workshop or event with an author or consultant on a specific topic, please contact us at any time. Schedules, pricing, and participation may vary.

Current events:
Neale Pitches U.S. Tour – October 2009

Professional Authors

Noel Ridge View Bio
Lori Oczkus
Jill Eggleton View Bio
Neale Pitches View Bio
Toni Hollingsworth
Jan Rozelle
Julie Zrna