Alaska Tech Learners for Teachers

Rusen Meylani, PWSC math faculty

Alaska Tech Learners for Teachers

As a high school teacher, you play a key role in the Alaska Tech Learners project by providing local instruction to your students. In cooperation with your school’s guidance counselor and principal, you will select and teach your students using the ATL curriculum for dual enrollment credit.

Your role as a teacher is to help your local students succeed in the curriculum. You can teach as few or as many courses in the project that you want. We want all teachers to be prepared to teach the content before they start teaching a course. This preparation can be based in prior education or experience, or you can take the Alaska Tech Learner courses as a student during the school year or at summer camps. All tuition, books, fees, and materials are paid for by an grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

The course materials are provided for you. Your main job is to facilitate the instruction to your students. In your classroom, you are the teacher in charge. You are given latitude to organize your classroom as you see fit. However, the student learning outcomes of the instruction cannot be modified, nor can you modify the weekly order of the instruction.

You should assess your students work for the purpose of providing a high school grade, but you are not involved in determining the university grade of the student. That is the job of the supporting PWSC faculty member. The faculty member will grade your student’s work and communicate that grade directly to the student, along with how the grade was determined, and how that student can improve their work. It is assumed that the university grade may be lower than the high school grade.

Alaska Tech Learners logo
NSF Logo

QUESTIONS?

For any questions regarding the Alaska Tech Learners program contact:

Steve Johnson: 907-834-1633 or swjohnson@alaska.edu

  • Teacher role

    Your role is to lead the weekly instruction and help your students succeed. The course materials are provided to teachers on a thumb drive that is mailed to you (a backup Google Drive copy is also available). The thumb drive has instruction broken up into weekly groupings. Each week’s instruction has weekly learning outcomes, PowerPoint slides for lecture, instructions and files for labs, several self-correcting quizzes and one self-correcting vocabulary, a list of optional readings (backup is provided on the thumb drive), and a listing of all assignments that are due that week to the university. It is suggested that the high school grade be based in part on the quizzes and vocabulary (they are ungraded optional activities for the university students), as well as the assignments that are turned into the university.You’ll participate in an ED A556 course, where you’ll be asked to give input on the course materials, your student’s progress, changes that you’d like to see to the course and any other input that’s appropriate.

  • PWSC faculty role

    The job of the university faculty is to provide the university assessment of your student’s work. After being introduced to the class, the faculty will communicate with students through weekly feedback of assignments and with you through the ED A556 course shell and any other communications that you request.

  • Synching calendars 

    School districts and the university are all going to be on different calendars. ATL instruction will start as early as the first school district starts their semester and ends when the last school district finishes their semester. It is expected that students will turn in their weekly work on a weekly basis. A master calendar will be set up at the beginning of each semester for each school participating in ATL where the due dates of assignments are negotiated. In exceptional circumstances, the teacher may re-negotiate due dates for the class, but students are expected to turn in their work weekly, where an instructional week starts on Monday and ends on Sunday.

  • Re-certification and steps

    All Alaska Tech Learner courses count towards the six credits you need every five years to renew your teaching license. These courses will also help you prepare to pass endorsement tests in technology and computer science. Tech Learner courses including the ED A556 course are offered as university course work that goes on your UA transcript and may also be used for any step pay raises that your school district may offer. Please check with your local human resources personnel about step pay, as each school district has its own policy on teacher compensation.

  • Taking semester-based courses

    High school teachers can take any ATL course during the school year as a student. These courses are taught on the university calendar as university courses. All tuition, fees, and materials expenses are paid for by the NSF grant.

  • Taking summer camp courses

    There will be at least one summer camp that is offered each year for ATL teachers. This summer camp will occur in late May, early June, or in early late July/early August. All tuition, fees, and materials expenses are paid for by the NSF grant. Enrollments are on a first-come, first-served basis.

  • ED A556
     

    You will be asked to participate in a 1-credit ED A556 course for each course that you teach. The purpose of this course is to help manage the ATL project and to improve the materials that are given to you to teach the course. In particular, the project is interested in adapting instruction to maximize the success for all students and the comments on the discussion board are part of the project’s evaluation of its performance. All tuition, fees, and materials expenses are paid for by the NSF grant.