Professional Development

Support for High School Teachers

Expository Reading and Writing Course

A task force of high school and CSU faculty has developed the Expository Reading and Writing Course (ERWC), a full-year college preparatory English course for high school seniors. The ERWC is aligned with the California English-Language Arts Content Standards and addresses critical reading and writing problems identified by the CSU English Placement Test Committee.

The goals are the ERWC are to help students succeed in three important areas:

• Meeting the requirements of the California English-Language Arts Content Standards;
• Attaining the standards of the CSU English Placement Test; and
• Achieving the expectations of college and university faculty.

Course assignments, organized into 14 modules and based primarily on non-fiction texts, emphasize the in-depth study of expository, analytical, and argumentative reading and writing. The University of California has approved the ERWC for area "b" credit (from the "a-g" requirements), and the Course meets college preparatory requirements for both the UC and CSU.

Professional Development for Teachers Interested in Using the Expository Reading and Writing Course

To promote wide-scale adoption of the Expository Reading and Writing Course (ERWC), the CSU and County Offices of Education are collaborating to provide professional development for English teachers at a variety of locations across the state. The three-day series, which includes a two-day workshop in the late summer or fall and one follow-up days (one in fall and another in spring), provides teachers with a theoretical understanding of the ERWC, outlines the benefits of the course for students and school personnel, and offers pragmatic strategies for using the course materials to teach each module. Although districts are responsible for the cost of substitutes, the workshops are free of charge for eligible teachers. Series attendees receive all of the course materials and are certified to teach the modules, either as a separate year-long or one semester course or as part of their established curriculum. Only certified teachers may teach the ERWC course.

Calibrated Peer Review

Calibrated Peer Review is a web-based program that enables frequent writing assignments even in large classes with limited instructional resources.

Mathematics Professional Development

A committee of mathematics professors, math educators from the CSU, and math experts from county offices and high schools has developed a short professional development program for math teachers who work at the level of Algebra I and above. The program includes two components: an online program that takes about one hour of your time to complete and includes some tasks to be done prior to the workshop that follows, and the workshop itself. The workshops are provided at no cost by a team of CSU and K-12 math experts in a wide variety of places around the state. These workshops are the equivalent of a full day in length—sometimes scheduled on two different days. While the online component provides information on the EAP program, how it works, what it means for students and parents, etc., the workshop focuses on helping students to develop sufficient math competency that they will perform successfully on standardized tests, including the EAP. For more information about math program, please contact Susan Fisher: sufisher@csufresno.edu.