Professional Development Needs to be Like This!

Hello & welcome to a special Wednesday edition of Tuesdays.

I attended a Continuing Professional Education committee meeting yesterday becasuse I wanted to be part of the planning for the professional development that will take place in our district next year. I presented something greater than 50 training sessions this year, and have worked with over 700 (unique) teachers of our district's (roughly) 1000, so I felt it was important to know what administrators, teachers and staff developers in the committee had planned, as I want to continue to train our staff on technology integration, UbD, and other educational topics.

I'm glad I attended. I like the plan they have in place for next year for teachers to earn their flex hours by attending training sessions that are grouped together in academies, from which a teacher can choose his or her focus.

However, there is more to professional development than in-service day activities and after-school training sessions that teachers complete for flex -- because we so very often complete those not for learning, but FOR FLEX. A great deal of professional development happens "on the spot," based on a teacher's need to learn something in order to complete some academic task.

I noticed that this type of professional development was omitted from the draft of our update to the eStrategic Plan, which listed several other types of PD (including after-school flex, PLC experiences, building- and department-level workshops, in-service, etc.).

My main contribution to this meeting was to ask them to add: "Needs-based, on-demand professional development that takes place during the work day," and I also threw in this last phrase: "from the Academic Integration (technology) team," because I am pretty sure we are the only ones left in our district who offer this type of PD.

In these uncertain economic times, I have to ask... if we are cut from the budget, who will do this?!?

OK, that is a topic for another rant at another time, but the short answer is this: the teachers will continue to do the vast majority of their professional development on their own, through their own research, as needs arise in the classroom, with or without the coaches like me. They will just be able to do less of it if our district cuts off that line of support... and in some cases, none of it, because teachers are swamped with work.

So what should professional development look like? Please consider these four examples, all of which took place during this week:

1) I was asked to show CPS to an elementary teacher. I drove to her building and found she had invited the whole group of her grade-level teammates at an elementary school to attend. They had tried the software and the clickers ahead of time and already knew the basics (I was proud to hear they had watched my podcast on CPS to get started!). They came in with specific questions they needed to have answered because they had run into a few roadblocks. Instead of delivering the whole presentation from getting started with the software to using it with students, I was able to spend the whole (precious few minutes of a) prep period helping them work around their specific obstacles. This is what professional development needs to be.

2) I was asked to give the basic training on Schoolwires to a first-year teacher. He did not need the flex hours and was unable to attend the two-hour after-school training sessions we give on setting up the teacher web pages. Instead, he was permitted to have his page turned on with the agreement that he would do the training with me during the work day. This teacher was so advanced in his prior knowledge and experience with technology that he was able to get everything he needed from that two-hour session by spending just 25 minutes 1-1 with me asking specific questions, and a few additional minutes where I shared some ideas I had seen others do around the district. This is what professional development needs to be.

3) This afternoon, for two hours leading into our spring break, the Academic Integration Coaches are presenting a flex session called "Everything You Wanted to Know About Your Computer... *But Were Afraid to Ask." We have 25+ people attending (for 4-6 p.m. leading into a holiday!). We have offered this session several times in the past. The agenda comes from teachers' individual questions, which they supply us with via a Google form sent out two weeks prior, and the instructors research the answers to present to the group. The agenda is based on answering their specific questions. This is what professional development needs to be.

4) I just met with a high school Spanish teacher. We have previously met during her prep time for me to teach her the basics of Moodle. During one of our meetings, we could not figure out how to import questions from assessments she created using ExamView software into the Moodle, so her students could take the assessments in this secure, online environment and be graded. This was something very important to her, so she decided to figure it out. Since we started working together her knowledge of Moodle has surpassed mine. She has students using it every day in class, while I only get to use it in training sessions with teachers these days. The purpose of today's meeting was for her to show me the solution she had figured out for importing those quizzes into Moodle. She had solved the puzzle, and was willing to share the solution with me, because I will be able to get that solution out to a greater number of teachers. And I will. She has agreed to narrate a podcast I will produce in the next few weeks that will walk teachers through the steps she takes to import the quizzes. This will save time for other staff who want to do this in the future, because she took the time to figure it out and share with her colleagues. This is what professional development needs to be.

This is what professional development needs to be:
Timely
Precise
Concise
Needs based
On demand

This is the most effective and meaningful type of professional development, and we need to fight to keep it available to teachers in our district.

Have a great spring break -- talk to you next Tuesday!