Original Vision

Bay Area Schools for Excellence in Education (BASEE) was a seven district Local System Change collaborative working with Hewlett-Packard Company and Agilent Technologies to improve science instruction for elementary students. Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, this initiative provided professional development for 1,750 teachers who serve approximately 44,000 students. Collaborative districts included: Cupertino, Los Altos, Menlo Park, Mountain View-Whisman, Palo Alto, Redwood City and Santa Clara. A myriad of other important partnerships emerged such as learning centers at the Exploratorium and WestEd or scientific institutions such as Stanford Linear Accelerator, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institution or US Geological Survey plus individuals who significantly impacted the work from Stanford University, San Jose State University, UC Berkeley and California State University at Sacramento. Together the partnership envisioned:

• building a sustainable system more powerful than any partner district could individually maintain
• helping teachers increase their content knowledge and science process skills - heightening their confidence and enthusiasm for science - as they experienced models of excellent pedagogy

In the early 1990's each of the districts participated in Hewlett-Packard's Hands-On Science Program, which included training at the National Science Resources Center (NSRC) in Washington, DC and a three-year $90,000 grant. Each district had a successful curriculum launch with the purchase of FOSS, STC or Insights units and a method for kit refurbishment. In 1997, BASEE sought to sustain those efforts and boost the districts to the next level with all students experiencing inquiry-based lessons meaningfully connected to math, literacy and technology. Recognizing that educators have different professional development needs during their careers, BASEE designed training for five different audiences.

Five Strands for Professional Development

1. Nuts & Bolts - unit training for new teachers, or those new to the curriculum
2. Ongoing Content & Pedagogy - in-depth summer institutes offered 30 hours of content background with rich examples of good teaching
3. Leadership - Lead teachers from each school site honed skills in coaching, facilitation skills, dealing with change and resistance, and inquiry
4. Administrators - Special workshops for principals and district administrators
5. Science Resource Teachers - SRTs built skills in leadership, professional development design, reflective practice, presentation skills and content background.

To guide selection, teachers began with a BASEE-designed professional rubric that identified potential areas for growth. Then each teacher developed a personal learning plan and selected opportunities that fit. Likewise, schools developed site science plans based on their identified needs.

Summer Content Institutes
Summer content institutes were designed to align with the state science standards and the curriculum concepts teachers were expected to teach at each grade level. One discipline of science (earth, life or physical) was addressed each year. The summer institutes could serve more than 20% of the teacher population each summer. The triad model for instructional teams meant that a content expert (often a university professor) took the lead in designing the summer institute curriculum and was guided by the assistance of the SRT who knew the students, teachers and curriculum. Also, a volunteer scientist served on each instructional team to provide content expertise, real world connections and often the field trip to enhance the teachers' learning.

Inquiry Institutes
Thanks to the Exploratorium Inquiry institutes along with their coaching, the SRTs patterned a BASEE "Invitations to Inquiry" institute that was offered every year. Featuring light and color as the content base, inquiry experiences were provided at an adult level. At the end of the week, teachers applied what they learned to their own classrooms by re-designing a lesson to increase the inquiry. Follow up coaching was provided along with an Advanced Inquiry institute in subsequent years.

Leadership and New Teacher Professional Development
Recognizing that sustainability would depend on maintaining leadership while simultaneously providing for new teachers, BASEE launched a program to build a cadre of "Certified Kit Trainers" who could deliver well-designed six-hour sessions on a single unit for new teachers or those new to the curriculum. The SRTs developed a list of six essentials for kit training as the mega-messages that all new teachers should experience regardless of unit topic:

1. Feature important concepts in science content by using the storylines.
2. Model use of science notebook with explicit remarks about value.
3. Demonstrate use of good classroom and materials management strategies.
4. Reiterate process skills within the lessons.
5. Refer to learning cycle chart and emphasize importance of the debrief portion of a lesson.
6. Show non-fiction books as examples of reading in the content area.

Each year a "Leap into Leadership" session provided training for experienced teachers who wished to become Certified Kit Trainers in order to provide professional development for new teachers.

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