Teachers at Kingsborough Early College Secondary School in Brooklyn always prided themselves on their school’s commitment to professional development. At this grade 6–12 school with a unique model in which most students graduate with an associate’s degree, the staff had concentrated on the Common Core, the Danielson Framework for Teaching and other aspects of curriculum that would help their students become college-ready.

But professional development at Kingsborough had always been done in a traditional way — with an agenda determined by the school’s administration and conducted in a single session for the entire staff.

“We’ve had really successful PD,” said Thomas Wierzbowski, a 10th-grade English teacher and the school’s lead teacher. “But we were at a point where one PD for everybody really wasn’t effective.”

So with the new time set aside in the contract for professional development, Kingsborough’s staff development committee — headed by Wierzbowski, UFT Teacher Center coach Liz Rogoff and Principal Connie Hamilton — decided to try a different approach.

Based on a needs assessment of the school’s staff of 40 teachers, they chose four inquiry topics for the year: assessment; managing student behavior; questioning and discussion; and college readiness. Each teacher chose one topic to concentrate on for an eight-week cycle with an inquiry group.

The groups, which were made up of about six members each and facilitated by teachers, met every other Monday and followed a similar structure.

“The first session is all about looking at what experts say about the topic,” said Wierzbowski. “What does the research say? What’s most effective? We hope teachers leave that session with a focus they want to work on in their classrooms.”

In the second session, teachers explored various strategies for addressing the topic in their classrooms and developed an implementation plan for trying a particular strategy with their students.

Seventh-grade math teacher Shawn Donnelly, who felt that the conversation in his classroom seemed flat, researched best practices from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and decided to model higher-level questioning strategies.

“The kids started embracing it and using it with each other,” he said.

In the third session, teachers shared the results of their classroom experimentation and refined their focus for the fourth session, when they reflected on the entire process.

To visually demonstrate their progress for each other, teachers created posters highlighting “Where I Started,” “What I Tried” and “How It Turned Out.”

On a recent Monday afternoon, the inquiry groups joined together for a “share fair,” perusing each other’s posters and leaving written feedback.

“We’re doing for each other what we do for the kids; we’re differentiating instruction,” Donnelly explained.