The InterMountain Educators’ Forum: an Introduction
History
IMEF was established as a regional professional development series for teachers in Umatilla and Morrow Counties in 2006. Planning for IMEF began in 2005 through a cooperative effort between the Athena-Weston, Hermiston, Ione, Morrow-County, and Pilot Rock School districts and the Umatilla-Morrow ESD. The first event occurred at Hermiston High School in the summer of 2006, although at the time it was still referred to as the Eastern Oregon Institute. As of 2007, the IMEF “brand” has been used on all small school focused, collaborative regional events.
Description
IMEF is conceptually very simple. Opportunities are presented through the year for small school teachers throughout the region to get together in subject area and grade level cohorts to discuss teaching practices, classroom management, curriculum design, assessment, state standards, and other issues pertinent to classroom instruction.
These cohort groups are facilitated by teacher leaders selected by school administrators. These facilitators sometimes act as experts, but always serve as peer-leaders to organize and facilitate discussions and activities at the events. These leaders form their own group, sometimes referred to as the Teacher Leaders Cohort (TLC), and meet periodically outside of the IMEF cycle of events for planning and sharing purposes.
IMEF owes much in terms of its design to Hord’s (and later, the DuFours’) contributions to the concept of PLCs. However, IMEF is not a rigid or philosophically “pure” model. IMEF is flexible by design and can be used as a scaffold to support any type of professional development strategy or goal that a school district might have. In reality, adherents of PLC implementations such as the DuFours’ would most likely argue that IMEF is in no way a PLC model. Since there is no debate here, suffice it to say that IMEF is not presented as a PLC model. The goals of IMEF are very broad and simple and are geared towards heterogeneous groups of small-schools teachers. IMEF is not a model designed to explicitly support a single district’s specific goals. IMEF is not part of the spectrum of accountability-based school improvement efforts. IMEF is all about small school teacher support.
IMEF:
- Is teacher focused.
- Is teacher driven.
- Is decentralized and democratic.
- Is ongoing.
- Reduces isolation.
- Recognizes that excellent teaching happens throughout the region and that this excellence can benefit the region as a whole.
The IMEF cycle has included multi-day seminars in the summer, full day events in the fall, and half day events spread evenly through the year. Those school districts that have been able to establish some common full or half day staff development dates have benefited most from participation in IMEF.
