We're celebrating another milestone: our professional development program "Wunderteacher 1" has been accredited by the Maryland State Department of Education. Part of our purpose is to serve and empower educators to integrate STEAM effectively into their teaching, and hence professional development is integral to the Robo Wunderkind experience. Learn more about our PD program and meet the first cohort from PGCPS, MD!

Robo Wunderkind is passionate about shaping the school of the 21st century, helping today's students realize their potential. At the same time, we support and ally with our teachers to create the STEAM classroom of the future. 

A study concluded that only 1 in 3 elementary school teachers in the US feel ready to teach STEAM and emphasized the necessity for professional development practices. Anna Iarotska, CEO & co-founder of Robo Wunderkind, declares: "We're committed to equipping educators with what they need to effectively and confidently teach STEAM and 21st century skills. Professional development is a vital part of the Robo Wunderkind ecosystem." Over the past months, we've worked hard to evolve our PD resources built to empower all teachers with the skills, strategies & confidence to teach STEAM effectively. 

For Teachers of Any Experience Level

Today we're proud to announce our 30-hour PD program "Wunderteacher 1" has been approved for 2 CEU/CPD credit hours by MSDE (Maryland State Department of Education)! "Our PD program is an accredited project-based experience that equips educators with the core skills to teach Robo in their classrooms while also providing a big picture framework for understanding STEAM and 21st century learning trends," explains Nathan Benjamin, our Head of Learning Design. Teachers learn within four core skills categories: 

1. Teaching with Robo; 
2. Coding & Computer Science; 
3. STEAM Principles & Practices; and 
4. Standards & Evaluation. 

Over a period of 12 weeks, we employ a hybrid a/synchronous model that provides the necessary flexibility to accommodate teachers’ busy  schedules. Teachers use Trello, a free Agile project management tool, to track their progress in the program. Starting at the kickoff, participants get a backlog with all of the tasks that comprise the Wunderteacher 1 program organized into 6 2-week “learning sprints”. While 60% of the program is individual work, the remaining 40% features synchronous collaborative sessions. 

Stay tuned for more: Wunderteacher 1 is the first release of an extensive offering of PD services to empower teachers around various STEAM-relevant skills.

‍Let's Welcome Our 1st Cohort!

While the accreditation is undoubtedly a huge milestone in our journey, it is not the only good news we'd like to share today: the first cohort is starting our "Wunderteacher 1" program this week. We are so excited to welcome ten schools from Prince George's County Public Schools (PGCPS) on board! 

PGCPS, ​​located in Maryland, is among the 20th largest school districts in the US and the second-largest district in Maryland. They're successfully using Robo Wunderkind in their dual language immersion program, and we are thrilled to extend this partnership even further. Besides introducing Robo Wunderkind in Literacy and Language Acquisition subjects, PGCPS integrated our tools into STEM classes at the Howard B. Owens Science Center. (For more details here is a blog post about our partnership).

The dual language immersion program focuses on three languages - Spanish, French, and Mandarin. Teachers utilize our products in grades 1-4 to create an interdisciplinary STEM experience for their students. We encourage the cross-curricular use of Robo Wunderkind and have observed great success in language immersion programs. Students engage in the engineering design process by prototyping and programming their robots while acquiring new language and literacy skills through interactive learning and engagement. Our philosophy, Learning through play, truly comes to life in such scenarios. 

We look forward to empowering even more PGCPS educators using Robo Wunderkind in their dual language immersion program and offering students a truly interdisciplinary experience where they learn STEAM-related skills and improve language and literacy skills. 

P.S.: Do you want to learn more about our PD offerings? Don’t hesitate to book a call with James Gordon for more information!

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