Calvary Preparatory Academy — Professional Development Resource Guide

How to use this guide

The CPA holistic grading model requires a specific set of teaching skills that go beyond curriculum delivery: Socratic questioning, oral assessment, rubric calibration, faith integration, and meeting facilitation. This guide identifies free and low-cost professional development resources organized around those skills. Resources are rated for time commitment and annotated with specific guidance on how each one connects to the CPA model.

Area 1

Socratic Questioning and Oral Assessment

The foundation of the Learning Verification category — how to ask questions that reveal genuine understanding rather than rehearsed recall.

Why it fits the CPA model: Short, focused introduction to the Socratic method in classroom settings. Covers the core principle of using questions to surface student thinking rather than deliver content — exactly the meeting model CPA uses.

How to use it: Watch as a team during a 15-minute staff meeting opener. Discuss one question: "How would you adapt this technique to a 7-minute one-on-one meeting?" A strong starting point before reading longer resources.

Why it fits the CPA model: Professor Rob Reich of Stanford Political Science gives an award-winning lecture on the Socratic method — its philosophy, its mechanics, and why it produces deeper learning than lecture. The framing maps directly to CPA's thesis-defense model.

How to use it: Watch individually as pre-reading for a calibration session. Timestamps to prioritize: 0:00–8:00 (philosophy) and 18:00–28:00 (practical questioning techniques). Use the Paul & Elder six question types framework he describes to build your own meeting prompt bank.

Why it fits the CPA model: Classroom video showing Socratic questioning in practice with secondary students. Useful for seeing the pivot technique — moving from prepared to unprepared questions — modeled with real students.

How to use it: Watch with the question: "Where in this video does the teacher pivot from a prepared question to a follow-up the student didn't anticipate?" Use as calibration discussion material before a group meeting practice session.

Why it fits the CPA model: Research-backed guide to the six types of Socratic questions (Paul & Elder framework): clarification, probing assumptions, probing evidence, perspectives, implications, and meta-questions. These map directly to the four LV components in the CPA rubric.

How to use it: Print and annotate alongside the CPA LV scoring guide. For each of the six question types, write one example question you would ask in a subject you teach. Use as a personal prompt bank supplement to Product 5.

Why it fits the CPA model: Practical implementation guide with specific question stems organized by Bloom's taxonomy levels. The higher-order question stems (analysis, synthesis, evaluation) map directly to what a strong LV Depth score requires.

How to use it: Use the question stem list as a starting checklist when building your subject-specific prompt bank. Particularly useful for teachers who find the pivot from prepared to unprepared questions difficult to do spontaneously.

Area 2

Rubric Design, Calibration, and Consistent Scoring

How to score consistently across students and across time — and how to design rubrics that actually measure what they claim to measure.

Why it fits the CPA model: Vanderbilt's comprehensive guide to rubric design covers holistic vs. analytic rubrics, the difference between descriptors that produce consistent scoring and those that produce drift, and how to anchor rubric levels with behavioral indicators. The CPA LV rubric is an analytic rubric — this guide will help teachers understand what they are working with.

How to use it: Read the section on "writing effective descriptors" and compare it to the CPA LV rubric components. Identify any level descriptor in the CPA rubric that you find ambiguous and bring it to a team calibration session.

Why it fits the CPA model: SCALE produces research-based performance assessment tools used by many schools transitioning from traditional grading to performance-based models. Their guides on anchor scoring — using student work samples to calibrate rubric levels — are directly applicable to training CPA teachers to score consistently.

How to use it: Download their anchor scoring guides and adapt the process for CPA meetings: identify one student response for each LV score level (strong, moderate, weak) and use those as calibration benchmarks at the start of each semester.

Why it fits the CPA model: Grading for Equity (Joe Feldman) provides a free self-assessment quiz for teachers to examine their own grading practices — including biases, consistency issues, and whether grades reflect learning vs. compliance. Several of the principles directly reinforce CPA's model: separating behavior from academic performance, allowing recovery, making grades meaningful.

How to use it: Each CPA teacher takes the free self-assessment quiz independently. Use results as a discussion prompt in a team meeting: which grading practices from your past most need to change to align with the CPA model? Not all principles map perfectly to CPA's faith-based context — evaluate critically.

Why it fits the CPA model: edWeb is a free professional learning network that hosts live and on-demand webinars for educators. Their assessment category includes webinars on rubric calibration, formative assessment, and standards-based grading. Because they archive recordings, teachers can access relevant content anytime.

How to use it: Search edWeb's archive for "rubric calibration" and "holistic assessment." Each teacher watches one relevant webinar per semester and brings one takeaway to a team discussion. The platform also offers free CEU certificates for many webinars.

Area 3

Performance-Based and Student-Centered Assessment

The research and practice base behind oral assessment, portfolio models, and student ownership of learning — the philosophy underpinning the CPA model.

Why it fits the CPA model: PBL Works focuses on project-based and performance-based learning, including oral presentation and student-led demonstration of learning. Their free resources include guides on student reflection, portfolio-based assessment, and teacher facilitation of student presentations — skills central to CPA's scheduled meeting model.

How to use it: Particularly relevant: their guides on "student voice" and "reflection." Adapt their portfolio protocols for the CPA end-of-section reflection document. The facilitation language in their teacher guides is also directly usable as meeting opening language.

Why it fits the CPA model: Harvard's Teaching for Understanding framework asks teachers to design assessments around "understanding performances" — tasks that require students to apply, explain, interpret, and justify knowledge in new contexts. This is exactly what the LV meeting requires. Their free resources include the framework overview and assessment design tools.

How to use it: Read the Understanding Goals framework and compare it to the CPA Depth of Understanding component. Use their "thinking routines" (also free at the same URL) as meeting warm-up prompts — especially "Think-Puzzle-Explore" and "Connect-Extend-Challenge."

Why it fits the CPA model: Specifically designed for online educators, this course covers student engagement strategies, formative assessment in virtual environments, and building community in an online school. Directly relevant to the CPA context — scheduled meetings, DDF, and asynchronous engagement.

How to use it: Audit the course free. Prioritize Module 3 (assessment) and Module 4 (student engagement). Each chapter translates easily to the CPA meeting and DDF context. No certificate unless you pay, but the learning is complete.

Why it fits the CPA model: Khan Academy's mastery-based approach tracks what students have genuinely demonstrated vs. merely encountered. Their educator resources include guides on mastery progression and student self-assessment — useful for CPA teachers thinking about how to structure portfolio presentations across 18 sections.

How to use it: Use Khan Academy's mastery framework as a mental model for structuring LV scoring across a semester: what does mastery of each subject's core concepts look like at section 1 vs. section 18? This lens helps teachers ask better growth questions in meetings.

Area 4

Christian Education, Faith Integration, and Mentorship

Resources specific to the Christian school context — building the faith-mentorship dimension of the teacher role that the CPA model formally recognizes.

Why it fits the CPA model: The Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI) offers over 500 hours of on-demand professional development specifically for Christian educators. Free content for ACSI members covers biblical worldview integration, classroom management, and Christian mentorship — all directly relevant to the faith dimensions of the CPA grading model. CPA's membership status should be confirmed with administration.

How to use it: ACSI members should prioritize their courses on "Biblical Worldview Integration" and "Christian Teacher as Mentor." These provide the theological grounding for the Faith-in-Action category — helping teachers evaluate student reflections with the same depth of faith understanding they are trying to cultivate.

Why it fits the CPA model: ACSI credentialing integrates professional standards with biblical standards — one of very few certification systems that formally recognizes faith mentorship as a professional competency. The CPA model's Faith-in-Action and Teacher Conviction components align with ACSI's view of the Christian teacher as a whole-person educator.

How to use it: Even if full certification is not pursued, exploring the ACSI credential framework gives CPA teachers a vocabulary and rubric for the faith-mentorship dimension of their role. Use the competency descriptions as discussion material for team PD on the Faith-in-Action grading category.

Why it fits the CPA model: Edutopia's SEL resources address the relational dimension of teaching that is central to CPA's one-on-one model. Articles on building trust, student self-reflection, growth mindset, and teacher feedback practices all directly support the holistic tier categories — particularly Growth Awareness and the Faith-in-Action reflection.

How to use it: Assign one article per month from Edutopia's SEL section as team reading. The article on "student voice" and the article on "feedback that actually helps students grow" are particularly relevant to the CPA meeting model. Discuss one actionable takeaway at the next team meeting.

Area 5

Using AI as a Professional Development Tool

How to use AI tools to practice meeting facilitation, generate question banks, calibrate rubric scoring, and reduce administrative workload.

Important note on AI use by teachers

Using AI to assist with your own professional development and preparation is entirely appropriate and encouraged. This is different from students submitting AI-generated work as their own. The distinction CPA draws — authentic learning demonstrated in person — applies to students, not to teachers preparing to teach more effectively.

Why it fits the CPA model: Claude can be used as a practice partner for meeting facilitation — you describe a student's subject and preparation level, and Claude responds as that student would. You practice your Socratic questioning in real time. Claude can also generate subject-specific question banks, write rubric level descriptors for new assignments, and review your LV scoring for calibration consistency.

How to use it: Try this prompt: "Act as a Grade 10 History student who has studied World War I causes and has a solid but not exceptional understanding. I am going to practice Socratic questioning with you for my scheduled teacher meeting. Respond to my questions the way this student would." Run the meeting. Then ask Claude to evaluate your questioning: "Now tell me which of my questions were most effective at revealing genuine understanding and which ones the student could have answered without actually knowing the material."

Why it fits the CPA model: ChatGPT can generate realistic student meeting response examples at different score levels — useful for calibration sessions. You can also use it to generate discipline-specific student misconceptions, which become the basis for targeted Socratic follow-up questions.

How to use it: Use this prompt for calibration preparation: "Generate three different student responses to the question 'Explain how the alliance system caused World War I to spread.' One response should be at a deep understanding level (8–10 on a 10-point rubric), one at a surface understanding level (4–6), and one showing minimal understanding (1–2). Make each response sound like a realistic high school student speaking out loud." Use the outputs as calibration anchors in your team scoring session.

Why it fits the CPA model: Google NotebookLM allows you to upload documents (like the CPA Teacher Guide, grading rubrics, and this PD guide) and then ask questions about them, generate summaries, and create study guides. Useful for teachers who want to internalize the CPA grading model deeply without re-reading every document.

How to use it: Upload the CPA Teacher Guide (Product 4), the Grading Examples document (Product 5), and this PD guide into NotebookLM. Ask it: "What are the five most important things I need to understand about scoring the Learning Verification category?" Then ask: "What are the most common scoring mistakes described in these documents?" Use the output as personal study notes.

Why it fits the CPA model: The Faith-in-Action category requires teachers to evaluate the genuineness and specificity of student reflections — a subjective judgment that benefits from practice. AI can simulate a range of student reflections (from hollow to genuine) for teachers to score and discuss.

How to use it: Prompt: "Generate five different student pre-meeting reflections for the 'Faith-in-Action' category, selecting from CPA's ten standards. Make them range from a clearly hollow response (a student going through the motions) to a genuinely specific and moving reflection showing real growth. Don't label which is which." Score all five independently. Then compare scores with a colleague and discuss any differences in calibration.

Area 6

General Free PD Platforms Worth Bookmarking

Broad professional development platforms with relevant content across multiple skill areas.

Why it fits the CPA model: One of the most consistently useful free resources in education. Edutopia covers project-based learning, assessment reform, student voice, SEL, and technology integration — all of which have direct CPA relevance. Articles are short, practical, and research-grounded.

How to use it: Bookmark and check monthly. Recommended search terms for CPA-relevant content: "oral assessment," "student-led conferences," "portfolio assessment," "Socratic seminar," "feedback that works."

Why it fits the CPA model: Teachers Pay Teachers has a large library of free and low-cost rubric templates, assessment tools, and PD materials created by practicing teachers. While quality varies, searching specifically for "Socratic seminar rubric," "oral assessment rubric," and "holistic grading" turns up practical classroom-ready resources.

How to use it: Use as a supplementary source when building new rubric examples or want to see how other teachers have structured similar assessments. Always adapt rather than adopt wholesale — CPA's model is more specific than most generic rubrics.

Why it fits the CPA model: Jennifer Gonzalez's Cult of Pedagogy channel offers some of the most practical and well-produced teacher PD content available for free. Relevant episodes include videos on feedback, questioning techniques, student self-assessment, and grading reform. The companion podcast covers the same topics in more depth.

How to use it: Recommended starting videos: "How to Give Feedback That Actually Helps Students Improve," "The Big List of Class Discussion Strategies," and "Alternatives to Traditional Grading." Each is 10–20 minutes and directly applicable to CPA meeting facilitation.

Highest-leverage investment

The highest-leverage investment for most CPA teachers is not a long course — it is 30 minutes of deliberate AI role-play practice before the first meeting of each semester, followed by a peer calibration session mid-semester. These two practices address the two most common quality issues in holistic grading: questioning technique and scoring drift.