“The collaborative and personalized style of professional development and coaching we have received in working with DePaul’s Office of Innovative Professional Learning has united our faculty and offered solutions to challenges.”
Armando Rodriguez, Principal, Sarah Goode STEM Academy
Gender Inclusion on a Changing High School Campus
St. Laurence High School, Burbank
DePaul University’s OIPL has been working with St. Laurence High School faculty for the last four years. For over a century, St. Laurence High School has been an all-boys Catholic school in suburban Burbank. When St. Laurence made the decision to become a co-educational school with the closing of the all-girls high school Queen of Peace, St. Laurence reached out to OIPL for guidance and resources. OIPL’s expertise in changing school culture along with expertise in best practices in instruction combined to offer St. Laurence a carefully crafted program to support faculty and students in key areas of gender inclusivity, navigating change, and best practices in teaching and learning for boys and girls. OIPL’s efforts with St. Laurence included counsel to create an ad-hoc committee to guide the transition. OIPL also worked with faculty providing an opening workshop that engaged faculty in experiential learning around gender and learning.
New Partnership, Meaningful Changes Ahead
Little Black Pearl Art and Design Academy
Little Black Pearl Art and Design Center is located in the Kenwood/Oakland neighborhood. Little Black Pearl is a thriving nonprofit serving youth in the Kenwood/Oakland, Woodlawn, and Bronzeville neighborhoods on Chicago’s south side. Firmly rooted in the black community, as the population has changed, so has Little Black Pearl by working with an increasingly diverse youth population and adding curriculum and services for adults and families. In 2011, Little Black Pearl Center established the Little Black Pearl Art and Design Academy a high school with a mission to serve area young people. DePaul Univesity’s College of Digital Media and Design, through the School of Design had established mission driven connection with Little Black Pearl. OIPL joined this collaboration to support the shared mission of personalized education and serving those most in need. OIPL has provided LBP teacher workshops to support the growth of best practices, and skills to meet the social emotional learning of students.
Learning and Growing Together
Office of Catholic Schools
The Archdiocese of Chicago’s Office of Catholic School and the College of Education of DePaul share a strong and mission-driven collaboration. The work of OCS to support the faculty of Catholic schools throughout Chicago has brought OIPL and OCS together. Upon the invitation of OCS, OIPL coordinated a system wide professional development session for teachers and leaders in the diocese. The workshop entitled “Engaged Teaching and Leading”, provided teachers and school leaders with strategies to use the power of self-exploration, design thinking, and research on neuroscience as tools to create empathy, connection and problem solving with students or faculty.
International Baccalaureate Expansion
International Baccalaureate Educator Certificate Program at DePaul
OIPL coordinates an innovative and cutting edge program that provides teachers training in the International Baccalaureate middle years programme (MYP) and diploma programme (DP). The IB training program currently has students from the 23 countries across the globe. This includes new students this fall from Romania, India, Jordan, Singapore, South Korea, France, and Vietnam. Laura Otero (pictured, right) a high school psychology teacher in Havana, Cuba, was the first IB teacher in that country to complete our course.
Micro-credential Dynamic Impact
OIPL is at the forefront of micro-credentialing. Micro-credentialing is an experiential and competency based professional learning program that engages learners in advances their expertise in several areas. Most recently, in partnership with colleagues from the College of Digital Media and Computing, OIPL is coordinating a micro-credential in “Transformative Teaching” for several teachers from schools across Chicago.
Faculty In Focus
Dr. Suzanne Velasquez-Sheehy
DePaul University doctoral alumni, Dr. Suzanne Velasquez-Sheehy is an adjunct faculty member for OIPL. Dr. Velasquez-Sheehy has brought her expertise in practices of EFT and faculty development to the work of OIPL. In that capacity, Dr. Velasquez-Sheehy has added her interesting and engaging EFT training to OIPL workshops.
Upcoming OIPL Workshops and Projects Winter/Spring 2018
OIPL will be facilitating a myriad of workshops, consulting, and coaching during winter and spring quarters.
Upcoming workshops include:
- STEM training Beijing, China – training program for middle school and high school teachers in Beijing focused on STEM education
- Teacher Coaching and Evaluation in preparation for AdvancED
- Writers Workshop for all students
- Teaching for the Whole Mind – Gender Equity in the Classroom
- Teacher Leadership
- Transforming Teaching with Game Design Thinking
- Curriculum Design
- Mindful Leadership