4MAT

Another root of Decatur's systemic staff development program has to do with curriculum and instruction across all grade levels and in all subject areas. It was chosen to address our School Board's belief that all students can learn. To make this statement more than mere rhetoric, we realized we needed to improve our instructional delivery design. All students simply cannot learn equally well unless we vary our teaching strategies in a systematic way. 4MAT is the framework we are implementing to answer this challenge.

Developed by Bernice McCarthy, it is well grounded in research both about the brain and about learning styles. It is an open-ended approach, adaptable to all grade levels and across all subjects, and has great software to support teachers' use of it on a daily basis.

Training available to all Decatur teachers on a continuous basis.