Your Instructor
The Curriculum Club Coaching Team, led by Tina Hargaden, the author of Stepping Stones Beyond Year One and the director of the World Language Proficiency Project, and Kaitlin Leppert, a Spanish teacher who has undergone a successful and massive shift in her teaching approach (and her happiness in the classroom), is a group of hand-picked teacher leaders who want, above all, to see YOU grow in confidence and success, so that your students can too!
Frequently Asked Questions
We are so excited to help YOU and YOUR STUDENTS finish this school year strong and prepare for you to launch into next year confident and totally in the groove of "Smarter, Not Harder" curriculum and lesson design.
You literally have nothing to lose except confusion, overwhelm, and that directionless feeling that so many of us have as we step into a new way of teaching. Our goal is to make this the BEST PD investment you have ever made. And we will give you all your money back if we do not make good on that promise. This group has been years in the making and is a labor of love for YOU and YOUR STUDENTS. We are so very much looking forward to our work together this summer and next year.
A personal note from Tina
Stepping Stones and the concept of a literacy-focused, skills-oriented, flexible yet structured instruction and assessment program that it lays out are game-changing developments for many teachers already, and the response from those who have participated in Summer Institutes 2020 has been overwhelming. This way of conceptualizing World Language instruction and assessment is what so many teachers have been waiting for.
Yet, I know from my personal experience of adopting the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project's approach, in 2006, that ongoing, day-by-day support is what teachers need when they rethink and restructure their programs from this foundational level. I was fortunate to have a teaching partner who held my hand that first year, as I learned the materials and strategies that eventually made me feel like I KNEW English Language Arts teaching from the ground floor to the penthouse.
Curriculum Club is YOUR teaching partner, to see you through the transition with live coaching, materials, and a community of practice to support and guide you as you make big changes in your World Language program.
Last year, Curriculum Club was truly a dream come true, and I am incredibly grateful for the dedicated colleagues, many of whom have become personal friends, who stuck it out with us as we built the materials and worked out the kinks, and saw this approach come to life in classrooms all across the nation and even in far-flung places across the globe. It was a work in progress, a labor of love, and an exercise in group patience as we constructed a year of materials and experimented with ways to best support each other in implementing them. THIS YEAR, you can benefit from all that hard work, with the entire year of materials ready for you, demo videos, and an experienced community of those pioneers who made Stepping Stones and Curriculum Club what it is today. It will be a much smoother ride, but still always a work in progress, as we are currently producing the year of materials for teaching online.
I cannot wait, Can. Not. Wait., to work with those who sign up for this journey with us for the 2020-21 school year. Each and every one of the coaches that we are preparing right now to support you are my close personal friends and colleagues, people I respect to the Nth degree, and dedicated educators who also have a passion for supporting the profession in general. I cannot wait for you to meet them soon, and to see our growth together!
Thank you so much for your dedication to students and to the profession and to the vision of a nation of biliterate, interculturally-competent, tolerant citizens. It is such an honor and a joy to work with you. Cannot, cannot, CAN NOT wait to work with you.
We literally want you to look at your bank statement each month and say, "It's SO worth it!" That's our goal for you -- to give you a go-to place on the internet, where you can be with a supportive group of like-minded language educators who are ready to shift the profession into higher orbit!