At the second statewide workshop in April, those same teachers managed to put forth their own opinions without disparaging the value of the other approach. One of those teachers commented that the value of the Saturday workshops was having the opportunity to discuss content, teaching approaches, modeling and student learning problems with other teachers. Perhaps the key to support is removing it from the actual classroom meeting time and placing it outside of the school day. The CoreModels project needs to do a better job of explaining the purpose of peer support and of providing methods to achieve those benefits. Computer access has not been a major issue, but it did impact start-up times for some.
Most schools have a computer support person who is in charge of installing new software.
With their other start-up responsibilities, some were slow in getting the computer labs ready for teachers to use. Teachers at one school avoid lab scheduling problems by using in-class computers. The teacher may prefer signing up to use a newer set of computers in a computer lab since she has neither the time nor expertise to service her own computer equipment. Students can be found to help her, but monitoring their work still requires extra time and effort. The CoreModels project has received increased visibility this year thanks to the ambassadorship of several of the Central Region teachers.