Scaffolding Teacher's Development Through Curriculum Materials

While elements of the Learning by Design program have been under development formany years, the units and rituals were first piloted as an integrated curriculum in the spring of1997. Four teachers in four middle schools in the greater metropolitan area of a large cityvolunteered to “try it out” in their classrooms. With the benefit of a weekend workshop andlesson plans that were occasionally faxed to them just minutes before their classes met, thesebrave teachers allowed us to track their progress. It is from them, and from the teachers whohave followed them, that we learned what was needed to make LBD viable. It was from themthat we discovered that teachers would need as much scaffolding in methods as students, in bothmethods and content, if they were to successfully convert their classrooms and their mindsets toan inquiry-based approach.Consistent among our participant teachers has been a desire to find a better way to teachor, better still, a better way for their students to learn. They are hopeful, and then subsequentlyconvinced, that Learning by Design provides a vehicle for this to happen. Creating the cultureis critical to its success and this requires extensive retooling of teacher habits. In this paper, wewill discuss some of our findings related to teacher needs in the LBD classroom. We willdescribe some of the techniques that we have incorporated to help teachers learn a new way ofmanaging the classroom.