Charlottesville, Va., September 6, 2016—Teachstone®, an industry leader in teacher professional development and early education quality improvement, today announced a long-term partnership with Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit educational organization behind Sesame Street. The partnership provides an innovative and beneficial series for teachers on myTeachstone™, the online CLASS implementation service that pairs classroom observation data with personalized professional development.
Combining Sesame Workshop’s knowledge of child development and research-based strategies for meeting the needs of individual learners with Teachstone’s expertise in professional development solutions targeted to the individual teacher, the two have co-produced an exclusive series of courses that focus on social and emotional development, mathematics, and language and literacy. The courses provide teachers with proven, everyday strategies for improving teaching effectiveness, and are now available exclusively on myTeachstone.
Teachstone is the home of the Classroom Assessment Scoring System® (CLASS®), which assesses interactions between teachers and children, shown to impact learning more than other quality markers like classroom materials or teacher experience. Founded in 2009 by CLASS co-authors Bob Pianta and Bridget Hamre, of the University of Virginia's Curry School of Education, Teachstone has trained and certified over 35,000 classroom observers to gather data on the effectiveness of classroom interactions. Teachstone helps early childhood programs around the world use that data to build programs that provide professional development solutions tailored to teachers’ individual strengths and challenges.
“We are thrilled to team up with an organization that shares our commitment to unlocking the potential of great teaching,” said Rebecca Berlin, Teachstone’s Chief Strategy Officer. “We see this partnership as an opportunity to engage our users like never before and empower them to take their professional learning to the next level."
For more than 47 years, Sesame Workshop has been helping children reach their highest potential by creating learning opportunities that are entertaining, meaningful, and grounded in child development research. Sesame knows what children need to thrive cognitively and socially, particularly in the critical early years of learning, and how to use the power of media—television, radio, books, video, and interactive technology—to impact children’s school readiness and long-term developmental success.
“We are happy to be able to employ the same proven combination of research-based, engaging media experiences we’ve always used to help children around the world grow smarter, stronger, and kinder, to give teachers the insights and supports they need to make a difference for each child—in the classroom and beyond,” said Akimi Gibson, VP & Education Publisher at Sesame Learning.
About Teachstone
If you improve how teachers connect with students, children achieve more—now and for the rest of their lives. That’s the promise of CLASS. Teachstone delivers on that promise by bringing CLASS observations and professional development solutions to organizations everywhere. For more information, visit us at www.teachstone.com, contact us at 877-401-8007, or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest.
About Sesame Workshop
Sesame Workshop is the nonprofit media and educational organization behind Sesame Street, the pioneering television show that has been reaching and teaching children since 1969. Today, Sesame Workshop is an innovative force for change, with a mission to help kids everywhere grow smarter, stronger, and kinder. We’re active in more than 150 countries, serving vulnerable children through a wide range of media, formal education, and philanthropically-funded social impact programs, each grounded in rigorous research and tailored to the needs and cultures of the communities we serve. For more information, please visit sesameworkshop.org.
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