Inspiring Ideas for the 21st Century Classroom

The summer is almost here!  It is about this time during the school year when most teachers feel totally drained.  The last thing you want to do is take a workshop or go to a seminar to keep up with your professional development hours.  We know how you feel because we are teachers too!  That is why the teachers at The Teacher’s Academy decided to come up with an inspirational course.  Inspiring Ideas for the 21^st Century Classroom encourages teachers to wind down, reflect upon their practices and have some fun watching other teachers work their magic around the world. This is an 18-hour professional development course designed for teachers who need a break!

There are 8 projects in this course:

1. Interview Question
2. Happiness Activity
3. Ted Talk: Mitra Analysis
4. The Teaching Channel Video Assessment
5. Curious Activities
6. Ted Talk: Tezuka Analysis
7. Dream Big Building Design
8. Personal Reflection

Each project gives teachers a chance to think about education in a new, creative way.   The course opens with a quick introduction and an interview question.  (A familiar, but important question.)  Teachers are then asked to watch a quick video.  After hearing some inspirational words, they are asked to add a few thoughts to their original answer.

Project #2, The Happiness Activity, allows teachers to enjoy a few minutes of a good-humored Ted Talk then practice some simple acts of kindness, as discussed in the course.  For a few days, teachers will choose to be grateful for 3 things, journal about something positive, exercise, meditate or perform some random acts of kindness.  All activities are designed to make teachers feel good about themselves and spread a little love!

Project #3, Ted Talk: Mitra Analysis, takes teachers on a journey to India!  Sugata Mitra conducts some exciting learning experiments with children living in the most poverty-stricken areas of the country.  Watch how children with no instructions, direction or guidance learn about some complex topics with nothing more than their curiosity!  Teachers get a chance to analyze this type of teaching practice and freely give their opinion.  (We can’t wait to hear what you have to say about this one!)

 Project #4, The Teaching Channel Video Assessment, poses 15 questions on a series of three videos with different ideas of how to inspire students back here in the US.  Empathize with other teachers from across the country as they struggle to create activities with purpose and meaning.  Watch how students respond to and retain information with hands-on activities.  (Maybe steal some great ideas to use with your own students!)  Learn about the importance of incorporating deeper learning activities into the curriculum.  Finally, watch teachers learn a new way to use art to enrich a language arts class.

 Teachers seem to love when we include projects that they can use in class (check out the projects in Nutrition and Creating a School Garden), and so our 5^th Project, Curious Activities, allows teachers to create 3 of their own inspirational activities to use in class.  Think about all of the cool new teaching strategies you’ve learned and lessons that you already teach.  Can you modify the activities to make them more inspiring?  Can you adjust certain projects to foster curiosity?  We offer some really cool examples and reference websites where you can find inspiration yourself!

Our 6^th Project, Ted Talk: Tezuka Analysis, takes teachers on a trip to Japan where they visit the “Best kindergarten you’ve ever seen!”  (Well, that is the name of the Ted Talk video.) Teachers get to see how engineers have created a school to address the needs of these young, rambunctious learners.   They will begin to discover how the design of the school can have a positive effect on education.

 Project #7, Dream Big Building Design connects teachers with educational architecture around the world.  See how schools and classrooms are designed in France, Germany, Afghanistan, and other parts of the nation!  With this information, teachers get to design what they believe would be the perfect school.  Using pictures from the Internet, software tools or just pencils and paper, teachers can have fun creating their educational designs.  We hope teachers can use a small part of their design to update their own classroom!

Our final project allows teachers to reflect on all of the new teaching ideas, inspirational people in education as well as new design features they found to be interesting.  This project is all about imagining what education means to teachers, how things might change or stay the same – whatever comes to mind, we want to know!  Think of Project #8 Personal Reflection as therapy in a word processing document.

The Teacher’s Academy is a company created by teachers for teachers.  We happily provide a service for many teachers who do not have access to free professional development.  Our service also benefits teachers who are more comfortable completing their requirements on their own, wherever and whenever is most convenient.

We are an approved provider of Act 48 Hours in Pennsylvania, Continuing Education Units in Texas and ACSI hours for our Christian school-teachers across the country.  We provide professional development hours for busy teachers in most states like Oregon, Ohio, Virginia, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Indiana, New Jersey, parts of New York, etc.   Find your state page on our website!

Teachers that work for The Teacher’s Academy are all certified and some are even working full-time in in the classroom or with other teachers, addition to writing and editing courses for our company.  Our “Teacher Features” get us into the classrooms of innovative and inspiring teachers so we can share their ideas with the rest of the nation.

This course is a direct reflection of how we have put the ideas from our client-teachers, into 18-hours of professional development designed to recharge positive energy!  Have a wonderful, relaxing, safe summer and enjoy this course at your own pace!

Have an idea for a course?  Contact us!  Check out our Course Catalog for a listing of all courses.