Education Consulting, Facilitation, and Professional Development

Authentic Approaches, Inc. provides high quality professional development for K-12 teachers and administrators. Training based on the Authentic Academic Achievement model enhances professional performance and boosts student achievement. These professional development programs enable schools to develop a coherent strategy for meeting the requirements of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) initiative.

Our Mission

Authentic Approaches, Inc. is founded on a commitment to the Authentic Academic Achievement model of professional development.* High quality professional development based on this model enhances professional staff performance and boosts the academic achievement of students.

Authentic Achievement is meaningful, significant, and worthwhile. It is the kind of achievement demonstrated by competent adults in their personal lives, at work, or as citizens. To be authentic, achievement must meet three general criteria:

Construction of Knowledge: Teachers and students construct or produce rather than merely reproduce meaning or knowledge. They express this knowledge in written and oral discourse, by making and repairing things, and in performances for audiences.

Disciplined Inquiry: Teachers and students use a prior knowledge base, strive for in-depth understanding, and express conclusions through elaborated communication.

Value Beyond School: Teacher and student achievement has meaning apart from documenting the competence of the learner. They have practical value beyond being an indicator of success in school.

Authentic Approaches’ professional development programs for teachers and administrators meet the three criteria for authentic academic achievement.

*The emphasis on authentic academic achievement is the result of the work of the School Restructuring Study conducted by the National Center on Organization and Restructuring of Schools, Fred M. Newman, and Associates, Authentic Achievement: Restructuring of Schools for Intellectual Quality, San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1996, and the work of Dr. David Harris and Michael Yocum, Powerful and Authentic Social Studies (PASS), National Council for the Social Studies, 2000.