For Facilitators

Guides for Facilitating Professional Development

Master Teachers lead more than two-thirds of the professional development opportunities at MƒA. MƒA provides guides and resources to help teachers create and facilitate learning experiences for their peers and colleagues that are welcoming, engaging, inclusive, and focused on improving teaching and student learning.

These guides are periodically updated and revised based on research and community feedback. They can be freely adapted and used in any professional learning space.

This page also includes information on Professional Learning Teams and the Teaching for Robust Understanding framework. MƒA uses this framework to foster a shared vision and language for high-quality professional learning among teachers in its program.

• Establishing Norms in Professional Learning Spaces

  Learn more about community agreements and setting norms in your professional learning spaces, as well as examples of norms used by our Master Teachers.

  • Facilitator guide for establishing norms

    Establishing norms for our professional learning spaces is important to building a professional community. At MƒA, our goal is to provide resources for facilitators to help them create equitable and inclusive learning spaces for all teachers who participate in professional learning.

  • Sample norms

    A collection of sample norms used in MƒA professional learning teams (PLTs) shared by PLT facilitators, including how the norms were central to their PLT’s work.

• Inclusive Language and Practices at MƒA

  Learn more about practices for using inclusive language in your professional learning spaces.

  • Interrupting biases

    While MƒA Master Teachers have a responsibility to address biased language and behavior from ourselves and in our interactions with colleagues, facilitators play a critical role.

  • Gender-inclusive language

    Facilitators at MƒA have a special responsibility to use gender-inclusive language in their communications. This guide can serve as a resource for facilitators to consider the ways in which they can make their workshop spaces more inclusive, and thus help to make our community stronger.

• Professional Learning Teams 

  Professional Learning Teams (PLTs) are small groups of teachers, co-facilitated by MƒA Master Teachers, who meet monthly to learn, investigate, and implement best practices collaboratively. Through our work with MƒA Master Teachers, we have developed five anchoring characteristics aligned with TRU professional growth that can support meaningful learning for all teachers engaged in a PLT.
  • Anchoring Characteristics of PLTs
  • PLT Readiness Checklist