GREENSBORO, NC - A state lawmaker and former educator says Guilford County's school system has tapped into a great concept for having teachers and administrators work together more effectively.

North Carolina State Senator Katie Dorsett (second from right) speaks to a team of principals at the Guilford Center for Quality Teaching & Learning™.

Sen. Katie Dorsett, a member of the General Assembly's Joint Education Oversight Committee, met with principals who participated in the Guilford Center for Quality Teaching & Learning's QTL™ program. As the principals raved about their teachers' progress after completing the program, Dorsett came away singing the praises of collaboration in schools.

"I think the thing I was most impressed with was the composition (of participant and collaborative teams) - having principals and administrators and teachers all working together," she says. "It just made technology come alive to me. I have never seen that grouping, or at least have never seen it work as well."

The Guilford County Center for Quality Teaching and Learning, now in its second year, helps teachers and administrators incorporate research-based educational strategies with technology to achieve more effective student learning.

QTL™ prepares teachers to use technology in conjunction with research-based teaching strategies in order to engage every child in the classroom. Educators attend the intensive 7-day professional development program in small teams, then plan and execute collaborative projects in their schools. Guilford County requires that principals attend a 3-day version of the program before their teachers can participate.

Guilford County's director of instructional technology, Zelia Frick, says requiring principals to get a taste of the program before they send their teams has been a key to success. She says principals are more supportive when they understand what their teachers will be doing and how it will help them learn to reach every student in the classroom. And teachers encourage the principals to attend so they will be able to participate.

"Word of mouth is the thing," Frick says. "It's working so well that people are talking about it and wanting to come take part in it."

Sedalia Elementary School principal Jennifer C. Topper says the QTL program has had a significant impact there. Two teams composed of teachers, the media specialist and the technology assistant attended QTL this year.

"For the first time in this schol's history," Topper says, "students are actively engaged in curriculum-integrated technology on (at least) a weekly basis, and it is changing the way our teachers look at teaching. I have witnessed the 'best teaching practices' modeled during QTL training being increasingly practiced in the classrooms, and the resulting increase in increased academic learning time for our students."

Sen. Dorsett, a retired educator who taught at North Carolina A&T and then spent a decade as a state Cabinet member, calls the program "wonderful" and says she is encouraged by that type of understanding at the administrative level.

"As an administrator I always felt that first of all, the administrators don't know it all," Dorsett says. "Sometimes they have to act and make decisions on information that they haven't worked with. This program creates a healthy respect by teachers, knowing their administrators are right there working with them, understanding what they do."