Professional development

CDL develops and implements programs, products and services with the fundamental goal of impacting change in our educational system by supporting and meeting the ever-changing needs of classroom teachers, school leadership, principals and professionals who work with students. Delivery of professional development is offered as public sessions and by contract with schools, districts and other organizations.

Public Seminars, Workshops and Institutes - CDL's public sessions include Plain Talk About Reading, The Assessment and Treatment of Dyslexia and Other Reading Disorders, Learning Profiles: Differentiated Instruction for Diverse Learners and The Assessment of Neurodevelopmental Processes That Underlie Learning. A calendar of upcoming events is available here, on CDL's website, and individuals may register for many of these sessions at our A+Web Store.

If you would like to be notified when we announce public sessions, please click on the Subscribe button on the left.

Site-based Professional Development - As the cornerstone of its programming, CDL offers professional development for individual schools, groups of schools, and school districts on a contract basis. Professional development is customized to meet the specific and individual needs of educators.

For teachers, principals and other educators, CDL's professional development most commonly addresses the following concerns:

How can I improve my students' scores? In today's accountability-driven schools, a great deal of emphasis is placed on student scores on standardized testing instruments. While it is important for children to do as well as they can on these tests, what is perhaps more important is that teachers — and parents — understand and capitalize on each child's strengths and address each child's weaknesses with focused intervention strategies. How CDL can help...

I need to know more about teaching reading! CDL has several excellent programs that address this need. We have provided thousands of hours of specialized reading training to teachers, reading teachers and literacy administrators. The need for teachers to understand the latest research and research-based instructional methods for teaching reading can also be met. Additionally, CDL works to identify the individual needs of schools and districts and address those needs with professional training, coaching and technical assistance. Learn about CDL's Learning Connections Program for schools. And, with our Plain Talk About Reading Institute, CDL brings together the brightest minds in the field of reading and literacy, providing interactive sessions that transform the latest scientifically based reading research (SBRR) into useful strategies for educators.

I want to learn more about the newest research on teaching and learning. Unfortunately, what has not found its way into many classrooms is the latest evidence-based research about teaching and learning from the fields of education, medicine and psychology. At CDL's Plain Talk Summits teachers interact with national and international experts and get expert answers to their real-life questions.

How can I accommodate learning problems, ADD/ADHD and learning disabilities in my classroom? Today's teachers are working in classrooms that look much different from those in years past. To accommodate their classroom needs, CDL's staff, including learning specialists and psychologists who specialize in children's learning, uses current knowledge and advances in medicine, scientific research, and best practices on teaching and learning to provide practical applications that work in the classroom. Find out more about CDL's workshops.

CDL's professional development for principals and school- and district-level leadership most commonly addresses this concern:

On a school-wide level, what can I do to support the needs of my teaching staff?
In our extensive work with principals and district level educational administrators, we have found that there is a great need to support, inform and engage administrators and their leadership teams in order to maximize the impact of change, programs and training. CDL's Leading for Learning (L4L) program works with school leadership teams and assists them in transforming their schools into learning communities.

Contact CDL for more information about any of these sessions.