TGR Foundation expands impact, launches Master Trainer Program
With educator professional learning programs a core initiative at TGR Foundation, the intended outcome has always been rooted in the idea of empowering educators to set up engaging, student-led learning environments in their own classrooms. While some specifics of our professional learning program, STEM Studio, have changed over the years, our approach of collaborating, celebrating and supporting educators to be their best selves for students, has emphatically continued. The TGR EDU: Create team is proud to introduce the next phase in this maturation of our professional learning, the Master Trainer Program.
The program began in the fall of 2019 with the selection of our first cohort of 18 educators from six states and two countries outside the U.S., including Senegal and Ghana. All of the educators selected have participated in at least one of our five-day STEM Studios and were selected to apply for the Master Trainer program because they embraced the learning of STEM Studio, took what they learned back to their classrooms to implement with students and showed prowess for sharing what they learned with other educators at their home schools.
The Master Trainer program will allow for the expansion of TGR EDU: Create, giving us the capacity to offer more summer STEM Studios in more regions of the U.S. and globally. In addition, by empowering participants in the Master Trainer program to bring STEM Studio to educators in their own communities they will be able to affect more change for students, specific to the needs of that community.
The learning program participants will undergo is extensive, preparing them to facilitate STEM Studio and set up an environment that is conducive to empowering educators in a welcoming, collaborative and transformative manner, all key characteristics of STEM Studio. The first phase of this training was held in late January 2019 with a Training Assistant Institute, preparing participants to assist TGR EDU: Create staff in facilitating STEM Studios in the summer of 2020. After a summer delving into facilitation, as Training Assistants, they will attend the Master Trainer Institute in the fall of 2020 and prepare to be primary facilitators of STEM Studio sessions in the summer of 2021. By this time these educators will don the title of Master Trainer and be prepared to disseminate the expansive, transformational change educators can experience by participating in STEM Studio.
The entire TGR EDU: Create team is ecstatic to kick-off the Master Trainer Program that represents a new phase for professional learning at TGR Foundation. We welcome these dedicated educators and look forward to the impact they will bring to educators and students across the U.S., and around the world.
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