We're pleased to share some updated opportunities for personalized professional development: school partnerships and leadership consultations. In addition, we also offer online workshops & participation in Learning Lab VT.

Please feel free to reach out to explore any of these offerings in more detail. We look forward to hearing about how we can support your work in the near future.

School Partnerships for Whole School Change

We provide high quality professional development to districts and schools. Our work focuses on supporting and leading whole-school change while embracing strong, trusting relationships and a plan for sustainable change. The professional development is collaboratively designed to be active, embedded,on-going, and focused. We believe in partnering with districts and schools that have a strong commitment to being student centered and providing the best possible experience for all involved.

Our model focuses on:

  • A three year relationship
  • 50-70 hours of embedded professional development per year
  • A teacher driven leadership team
  • Driven by research and best practice

This experience should be considered intensive, ongoing (measured in years), and connected to practice. It focuses on student learning and addressing the teaching of specific curriculum content. It aligns with school improvement priorities and goals, and aims to ..build strong working relationships among teachers. It's an experienceanchored by attention to students’ thinking, the curriculum, and pedagogy. It offers access to alternative ideas and methods, creates opportunities to observe these in action while promoting reflection on the reasons for their effectiveness.

And it facilitates active learning among teachers.

Our partnerships provide opportunities for teachers to observe each other, plan collaboratively, review examples of student work, and present to colleagues and community beyond their school walls. If you are a school or team leader interested in hearing more about a long-term partnership opportunity, please contact Scott Thompson, at partnerships@tarrantinstitute.org.

PARTNERSHIPS IN ACTION

Economics, equity, and field trips at Mettawee Community School

Mettawee Community School, in West Pawlet VT, loves tradition. They're a small, tight-knit school in a rural area, and home to two very important traditions: the annual Christmas holiday fair, and the sixth grade trip to Boston. And in order to address inequity in one tradition, they developed a unique solution that tied the two together.

We partnered with the full faculty at Mettawee in helping them build on their tradition of care and kindness, and move towards a more democratic method of bringing students into the decision-making for building curriculum, and honoring student-led, self-directed learning.

Student-led conferences, service learning, and outdoor learning spaces in Southern VT

Educators at Leland & Gray, in Townshend VT, were looking for a big shift towards student-centered learning. Through our multi-year partnership, they moved to successful student-led conferences for their middle grades community. We helped them build in the supports for students to write grants, design new learning spaces, and more deeply connect with the larger Vermont community. 

The transformative changes at Leland & Gray came about as a result of educators, administrators and the whole community partnering with students in designing engaging learning. Those students then became passionate advocates for themselves as learners.

Systemic change to campus, community, and cafeteria at The Dorset School

How do you get fresh eggs on a school menu? Students at The Dorset School, in Dorset VT, did it by researching, designing and building their own school chicken coop. They crowd-sourced donations for materials and had some hands-on help from community members, and now The Dorset School is home to some very happy chickens.

But our multi-year partnership with the Dorset School didn't end there.
We provided them with funding and design support for a new makerspace in the school, and, in working with the middle grades faculty in Dorset, we were able to co-create with them a new way to approach curriculum design and a learner-centered model of engaged instruction.

Bringing "Passion Projects" to the whole community

At Flood Brook Union School, in Londonderry VT, we partnered with the middle grades team in helping them launch "Passion Projects": projects created, designed and built entirely by each student, based on their own unique interests. Students engaged deeply in these self-directed learning units -- building trebuchets, learning to code, drafting dress code policies -- and became engaged and passionate learners, capable and eager of not just executing their projects, but sharing them with their community in a town-wide exhibition.

Through this partnership, we’ve also provided Flood Brook with support in moving to negotiated curriculum, and co-designing integrated units with students.