You may have seen them around the campus juggling balls, dropping eggs packaged in newspaper off the Green Building, or forming a polygon with cord while blindfolded. TILT is an annual, year-long professional development program designed to rekindle teachers' interest in learning, develop their skills in teaching and prepare them for implementation of systemic education reform. Models of teaching and learning in America's primary and secondary schools are changing as education professionals try to develop better ways to prepare students to enter the work force.
Teachers teach an integrated curriculum rather than one subject and then another.
They team-teach with colleagues rather than isolate themselves in classrooms and embrace multiple learning styles rather than follow limited textbook instructions. Professional development now advances systematic improvement in performance not just for teachers but for everyone who affects student learning. Upon arriving at MIT, each team is joined by a pair of co-facilitators, an MIT faculty or staff member or former TILT participant and a UROP student. Our expectation is that these teams, with support from MIT, will create a dialogue on long-term education reform back in their communities. The main task of getting teachers to teach differently centers on getting them to learn differently.