The Professional Development office provides a catalog of summer workshops and teachers can register using a touch-tone telephone to access a computerized enrollment system available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Classes are conducted by district personnel and by recognized experts brought in at district expense. In the summer of 1998, about 98 percent of the 2,393 participants who attended summer workshops were teachers. The office of Professional Development also facilitates Goal III, an initiative undertaken by the district to engage teachers in collaborative action research projects. Goal III projects are intended to improve teaching and learning, foster effective school change, involve teachers in focused collaboration, and compensate teachers for professional development.
Teachers submit a Goal III application proposing a collaborative action research project.
KISD recruits and hires about 300 new teachers each year, one-half of them novices. Nationally, approximately 30 percent of novice teachers leave the profession during the first two years and more than 50 percent leave during the first four years. KISD programs provide orientation, mentoring, and skill development for new teachers and are exemplary efforts to improve instruction and to retain teachers. A substitute is provided for the observation day. The Professional Development office also facilitates a quality mentoring program that encourages professional and personal relationships to foster life-long learning.