At the annual KSTF summer meeting, Fellows participate in and lead professional development sessions for hundreds of their colleagues. Beverly organized collaborative working groups on standards-based grading at the 2014 and 2015 KSTF summer meetings. Finding this format to be beneficial, she suggested to her principal the addition of collaborative working groups as part of the school’s end of summer professional development. In summer 2015, the district hosted a tech fair to support approximately 100 teachers in their new 1:1 student to Chromebook environment. At the tech fair, Beverly recreated the KSTF experience by leading a collaborative working group on the basics of using Google Docs and Google Drive in the classroom.

As part of the program, Fellows explore their own teaching practice through practitioner inquiry. Seeking to recreate the KSTF experience at her school, Michelle invited colleagues to join in her in exploring inquiry and student learning as a collaborative working group. During the fall semester of the 2015–2016 school year, the group of approximately five teachers met on a monthly basis to reflect on their teaching practice, and share data and artifacts that demonstrate student learning. “That group was very helpful for me. To some extent it was just nice to take a deep breath and sit with colleagues,” shared a veteran biology teacher who participated in the collaborative working group. “It also offered a very focused opportunity to reflect on my practices and consider other’s experiences as well. It sparked conversations that continued in the office and ideas that would percolate into new approaches to teaching.”

Jeff was introduced to POGIL™(Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning) through the KSTF Teaching Fellowship. Inspired by the Fellowship’s focus on teacher leadership, Jeff received a professional development grant from KSTF for he and a colleague to attend a POGIL™ Facilitator Training Workshop. After attending the workshop, the two presented the basic tenets of POGIL and how they use it in the classroom to 11 teachers at their school. Following the session, all of the chemistry and biology teachers at the school began using POGIL in their classrooms.

In 2013, three KSTF Fellows—KD Davenport, Kirstin Milks, and Rebecca Van Tassell—received professional development grants from KSTF to fund a writing retreat. The 1.5 day retreat provided the time and space for the trio to review published articles in The American Biology Teacher, along with submission and reviewer guidelines. Additionally, the retreat provided time and space for writing sessions. By the close of the retreat they had completed drafts of of two articles to submit to the journal. In spring 2015, The American Biology Teacher published “Using Evolutionary Data in Developing Phylogenetic Trees: A Scaffolded Approach with Authentic Data” by KD Davenport, Kirstin Jane Milks, and Rebecca Van Tassell and “Investigating Tree Thinking & Ancestry with Cladograms” by KD Davenport, Kirstin Jane Milks, and Rebecca Van Tassell. During the 2015–2016 school year, KD presented two hour-long professional development workshops to approximately 25 school colleagues, including non-science teachers. The workshops were based on the activity described in the trio’s article on evolution.

Four KSTF Fellows—Carly Brown, Tim Ellis, John Holcomb and Michelle Vanhala—received professional development grants from KSTF to fund a three-day meeting for the group. They met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania prior to the 2015 KSTF Summer Meeting to jointly develop chemistry curriculum that they then taught at their respective schools across the country during the fall semester of the 2015–2016 school year. During the meeting, they turned the Next Generation Science Standards into student friendly “I can” statements that guided their work. After the initial meeting, the group continued to debrief online and some members developed curriculum for the spring semester. To support implementation of standards-based grading in his classroom, John sought out standards-based grading resources from members of the KSTF community. After finding that standards-based grading helped him to better understand what his students did and did not learn, he shared his experience with the principal and assistant principal at his school. At the request of his principal, John led three, one-hour professional development sessions on standards-based grading that were attended by all 30 teachers at the school. He learned that the art teacher wrote learning goals for his classroom and began using standards-based grading immediately following his session.

Andrea received a KSTF leadership grant to fund a two-day retreat for the six math teachers at her school. The retreat was aimed at strengthening the numeracy skills of their approximately 390 students. During their retreat, the group developed a list of numeracy skills their students need to master for success in future math courses. Additionally, they began working on a four-year scope and sequence that aligns to the math assessment used by the local community college, and selected a platform to track and assess student growth with regard to numeracy skills. The grant includes funding for the group to meet in summer 2016 to continue creating the scope and sequence and to develop the assessments that would be used.

At his first KSTF cohort meeting, Stephen was introduced to the Understanding by Design® framework. Over the five years of the Fellowship, he explored this framework further through lesson study with other Fellows. Stephen shared the Understanding by Design® framework with his wife—Julie Minbiole, a biology professor—who began using it to improve learning in her courses at Columbia College. The two shared the insights they gained from implementing Understanding by Design® during a workshop—Improving Course Coherence, Assessment, and Student Engagement using Understanding by Design Planning—at the 2015 National Association of Biology Teachers Annual Meeting. The goal of their presentation (and her accompanying paper) was to foster conversation between high school science teachers and undergraduate-level science professors to facilitate the sharing of pedagogy and practice.