Dave Stuart Jr.

Teaching Simplified.

A Simple Template to Ask Your Administrator to Pay for the Teaching with Articles Course

The Teaching with Articles course is the kind of thing that you shouldn't be paying for out-of-pocket until you've at least asked for help from the school decision-maker. Below, you'll find an actual email template for asking The Boss to invest in you through this digital workshop. I've used the template in my own career several times, both when I taught in Baltimore and in the school I work in now in Michigan.

We shouldn't expect our administrators to just spend money whenever we ask — that would be careless. Yet we also shouldn't assume that they won't appreciate a well-reasoned, student-centered request for modest, self-chosen PD funding.

In my experience, administrators (wisely) avoid advertising the money they can use to support individual PD requests, yet they are also able and willing to spend it — especially in small, sub-$100 doses, and especially on well-reasoned, student-centered requests.

The Template

Below is the template I would use to get the price of Teaching with Articles covered by my administrator. Obviously, I'm not going to ask my administrator for that, but every year I do try to ask my administrator to support my personal professional development (you can see an actual letter I've used with my administrator here; the one I recommend you use for TwA is below).

Here's the users manual to the template. Please read this because I feel like I'm handing you a light saber right now:

1) Be honest. If you're not going to use the resource, don't ask for it. If you don't believe it will help you promote the long-term flourishing of your kids and advance their achievement, don't ask for it. If something I've written in the template below doesn't ring true, either re-write that part or work this week to make it true and then write the email.

2) Connect with something the administrator has spoken to you about, something mentioned at a previous staff meeting, etc. Basically, you're making an argument here, and part of that argument needs to be that the resource you're requesting connects with the goals of your building and the person whose support you need.

3) Be crystal clear on how much your request will cost (I even bold the prices when I write these kinds of emails to my admins). In the case of Teaching with Articles, make sure your principal knows that the cost is $69.

Here's the template:

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Hi __________,

The comments you made at our recent staff meeting about ___________ were very [helpful, thought-provoking, generative]. My students are benefiting from the __________________ idea you gave me; for example, the other day ______________. [The point with this paragraph is to make a genuine connection between something your admin said and the Workshop you're about to ask for. It's also to demonstrate that you valued a specific aspect of your administrator's recent work.]

The more you learn, the more you learn, right? I’m wondering if you have $79 left in your PD funds for the year. I've been following a teacher-author online for awhile now named Dave Stuart Jr. (You can find his blog at DaveStuartJr.com.) Mr. Stuart is offering an online professional development workshop, Teaching with Articles, which I believe would help me for several reasons:

  1. The workshop has a section on the obstacles we face when teaching with complex texts (even though the workshop is geared toward articles in particular, it is essentially a study of teaching with complex texts). Mr. Stuart covers student motivation, lack of teacher time, and various other issues that I would love to hear his thoughts on. If I could crack just one of these problems, it would greatly benefit my work with students.
  2. The workshop has a section called “9 Instructional Moves, No More.” I am curious to learn (and see modeled — Mr. Stuart uses video from his own classroom to illustrate his concepts) more about the moves Mr. Stuart recommends we work on before, during, and after reading a shorter complex text with students. My hunch is that his focus on only nine moves could help me focus on a few instructional habits that I should master before moving on to anything else.
  3. The workshop includes over three hours of Mr. Stuart's interviews with experts, including people like Mike Schmoker, David Conley, Gerald Graff, and Rick DuFour (to name a few who I'm excited about).
  4. [It's not a bad idea to add one more reason — and, of course, make sure all the reasons above are true for you. You can see a full list of the course curriculum by scrolling down to the “Curriculum” section of this page.]

In total, I believe this excellent professional development workshop, which I intend to complete by __[date]___, would have a ripple effect on our school in the coming years through my interactions with other teachers, and it will only cost a mere $79, which gives me lifetime access to the course. If the money is available in our building’s PD allocation, I would love to leverage what I learn from this workshop to help make our students increasingly prepared for college and a career, and I’d be happy to sit down with whoever I need to [I include the actual name of the person responsible for ordering things in the building] to aid in the ordering process.

[This last part is up to you — every building is different, but I've had administrators who actually don't like independent PD as much as they do group PD experienced by more than one teacher.] Also: If this seems like an opportunity you'd like to make available to more of my colleagues, Mr. Stuart does have two bulk discounting options:

Thank you for your time in considering this request.

Have a great day,

[Your Name]

PS Mr. Stuart does accept purchase orders!

*******

That's it. (If you'd like an editable, Google Docs version of this, click here and go to File > Make a Copy.)

So there you have it — have fun with your request, and view it as a learning experience. If there's any way I can personally help you, just be in touch.

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