After School Enrichment Services
After school programs provide a unique opportunity for schools to provide their students with an education that extends beyond ordinary classroom instruction. Gentle Knowledge opens up new learning opportunities for children by running fun and educational classes that involve elements of math, programming, and brain games. For more details about our teaching methodology refer to our student page. For more information on how we can best suit your school's needs please contact us.
Professional Development Services
Gentle Knowledge provides various professional development services to schools and schools districts guided by the belief that dramatic improvements to any education institution can be achieved through cost-effective in-service teacher training. Our ultimate goal is to ensure that, at minimum, there is no gap between what schools teach and what institutions of higher learning and the workplace expect from incoming school graduates.
You can learn more about our approach in our professional development white paper: A Gentle and Cost-Effective Approach to Dramatically Improving Mathematics Education
Key Principles
- Teachers are at the heart of the solution to the problems of education and need all the support they can get. We recognize that teaching is difficult and provide materials and techniques that significantly decrease teachers' workload while improving the quality of the work they do.
- Insufficient teacher preparation in mathematics is best addressed by the topics that are immediately relevant in the classroom, not by submitting teachers to grueling reeducation involving topics that are best suited for graduate or advanced undergraduate work
- Teacher accomplishment depends on the accomplishments of their students. Our teaching materials and training classes allow teachers to give their students opportunities to do work that is recognized as far above and beyond the requirements of education standards. We are in the business of bringing prestige back to the teaching profession.
What We Offer
- Teaching Material: Gentle Knowledge has access to a wealth of original teaching materials, including problems, articles, and interactive activities, some of which have appeared in books and other publications written by team members, and some of which have never appeared in print before. After taking into account the particular sequence of topics in a school or school district, we incorporate the relevant material at our disposal into custom teaching kits that become the basis for professional development workshops and which are subsequently used by teachers in their classes. These teaching kits, which are in effect detailed lesson plans, include class discussion manuals, homework assignments, assessment tools, enrichment activities, and detailed solutions to all problems.
- Training Courses: Teacher training is a critically important component in the successful use of the teaching kits described above. Because no assumptions are made about teachers' mathematics backgrounds, these professional development classes allow us to go over the material before it is presented by teachers to their students, discussing both the requisite mathematics and common pedagogical scenarios that may arise in the classroom. As an additional advantage of these classes, teachers can earn Professional Development Points (PDPs) for attendance and written work. Throughout the duration of training classes, we incorporate feedback from teachers to continually improve what we offer, and we put special emphasis on a stress-free environment.
- Technology Support: Password-protected teaching kits are available online for all teachers in a client school without regard to whether they participate in professional development classes. In addition, we host an online forum to facilitate collaboration between teachers and to allow us to answer any questions that may arise. This is a major cost-cutting measure that seeks to reduce the number of actual classes and workshops that need to be run, while significantly increasing the distribution of materials and best practices across multiple schools. Several other web-based solutions are currently under development.
Long-term teacher training classes can also focus on working with advanced students or introducing basic computer science into the STEM curriculum. We also run short-term workshops and consult on curriculum development and other education issues. For more information please contact us.