CHOICE LogoIn February 2021, Virginia Ed Strategies announced our organization had been awarded an Education Innovation and Research (EIR) grant from the U.S. Department of Education totaling $10.8 million. Grant funds support the creation of the Professional Learning by Choice Community or CHOICE, a research and development project funded for five years between 2021 and 2025, which will allow for teacher self-selected professional development opportunities for up to 1600 secondary STEM teachers across the Commonwealth. Training selected by teachers as well as any additional PL-associated costs such as travel or materials are being paid for by grant funds. For the pilot, CHOICE also provides instructional coaches and a professional learning community to support teachers and their administrators in implementing instructional practices that lead to increased student achievement. The ultimate goal of the CHOICE project is to produce a cadre of highly-effective teachers, the vast majority of whom teach in rural school settings, who will build school-, division-, region-, and state-level capacity in a variety of learning environments (traditional, virtual, hybrid, etc.) and demonstrate a positive, sustained impact on student learning and achievement.  

In the summer of 2021, we began recruiting high school teachers from math, science, computer science, and CTE content areas to participate in Cohort 0, the pilot cohort of our CHOICE project. We are proud to share that our pilot cohort consists of 74 secondary STEM teachers divided into 4 communities of practice (COP). Each CoP was assigned two Instructional Coaches and they have approximately 15 teachers each that they work with on an individual basis. CoPs meet quarterly as a group, but there are other opportunities for teachers to connect within the CoP such as small group meetings and discussion boards. 

One of the key elements of the CHOICE project is a self-assessment tool which allows teachers to evaluate their professional learning needs. The self-assessment was developed in the fall of 2021 in consultation with Dr. Angela Webb, Associate Professor of Middle, Secondary, & Mathematics Education at James Madison University (JMU). Teachers in the pilot cohort are the first to complete the self-assessment and use the results to inform their selection of professional learning opportunities. The CHOICE Dashboard was created to meet a variety of project needs including facilitating teacher selection of opportunities, engagement in CoPs, and monitoring of available funding. The CHOICE project team has been hard at work gathering and vetting learning opportunities to include in the Dashboard. Teachers in the pilot will complete their selected professional learning activities by the end of summer 2022. 

The CHOICE project staff are eager to learn from the experiences of the pilot group and use their feedback to improve the project for future cohorts. One major change on the horizon for Cohort 1 is teachers will be paired with CHOICE Community of Practice (CoP) Facilitators and have direct access to Content Specialists who will provide teachers with the specialized support they need related to the content they teach, CHOICE engagement, and attending professional learning. 

Recruitment for the next Cohort of CHOICE teachers is in full swing. Please see our CHOICE page for more information about CHOICE and visit our Join CHOICE page if you’re interested in more information about how to participate in Cohort 1. Teachers and school leaders are encouraged to complete an interest form!

In addition to teachers, we’re also looking to hire 10 part-time CoP Facilitators and four part-time Content Specialists. Information and application materials can be found on the second half of the Join CHOICE page.