PUSD Set to Partner with The Huntington Library for Common Core Teacher Development

[Editor’s Note: This story originally described the financial support funding the development program as a $352,000 grant. However, Thea M. Page, Director of Marketing Communications, wrote to clarify that The Huntington is not a grant-making agency. “We will, indeed, be offering the teachers’ program described, and are helping with the fundraising for it,” Page wrote.]

 

[Updated April 29, 2014 | 4:00 p.m.]  The Pasadena Unified School District (PUSD) is set to engage with the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens for a more than two-year development program for local school staff.

The program between the two institutions is intended for the “Arts, Humanities and the Common Core” Professional Development Partnership, which provides an intensive professional development program for PUSD school teachers.

The Huntington Library will administer the program.

Its purpose is to enable the teachers to successfully implement the common core project that focuses on building students’ literacy in social studies, science and arts.

The funding, which is being raised by the Huntington Library, will be used for PUSD staff expenses of “Supplemental Pay, Presenter Pay for 11-month employees which facilitate sessions outside of their normal work hours, a Contract Program Coordinator and all the necessary art and office supplies.”

The program was set to begin on April 1 this year and will end on June 30, 2016.

Year one of the project will include a “Common Core 101” summer training for 60 PUSD secondary teachers, as well as for 100 PUSD K-5 teachers.

The year two goals and activities include three one-day training for 90 teachers, summer training for 60 additional PUSD teachers in June 2015, and 100 more in July or August 2015.

The year three of the project will cover Fall 2015, and Spring and Summer 2016. It will include three one-day training for 90 K-12 teachers, as well as for 200 teachers who were not able to participate in prior training.

PUSD and Huntington collaborated in the summer of 2013 to present the common core project to 90 PUSD teachers. The Huntington demonstrated to the participating teachers how to “integrate humanities-related informational text in a Project-Based Learning Plan.”

Ninety-two percent of the attendees answered “agreed” or “strongly agreed” when asked if the training equipped them with the needed skills to “transition instruction for the Common Core Standards,” PUSD said in a statement.