"Choose Your Own Adventure" Professional Development

During my time as a coach over the past five years, I've presented hundreds of professional development sessions.

One model in particular seems to have worked better than any other, so I am interested to see if more coaches, teachers, staff developers and administrators would be able to adopt it for their own use.

I'm calling it "Choose Your Own Adventure" PD because the agenda for the training session is created or chosen by the participants.

In my experiences, here's how it worked:

The session description tells teachers that the session "will largely be directed by your individual questions. Those who sign up will receive an email a few weeks prior to the session asking for questions and topics they would most like to see covered."

The presenter(s) make a Google Form and send it to all enrolled participants two weeks prior to the class. The form asks participants to select from a list of potential topics the ones that would be most beneficial to them. The form also asks participants to list any questions they would like answered, and what they most wanted to learn when they signed up for the training.

Over the next two weeks, the presenter(s) research the individual questions and answer all of them in writing, often with step-by-step directions and screen captures. The agenda is created based on the most selected topics from the list of potential subjects, with the most frequently selected topics at the top of the agenda.

During the session, the presenter(s) move through the topics, but are mindful to answer individual questions throughout. A good portion of time is also left to answer every question from the pre-session form, but all these answers have been written out and posted, so they will be available for future reference if we don't get to every one. If we do cover every question, there is time for some practical application of what the participants learned.

It must also be made clear to participants that they may "tune in and out" as they see fit. If the discussion is focused on someone else's question, but it is an area they are already familiar or comfortable with, they can continue browsing the links on the agenda (posted online via a wiki) and reading the answers to other questions. At any point, participants may "stop" following along with the agenda, and use the time to apply what they have learned to their own classroom use, developing a lesson, unit, project or activity they can take away with them.

The session has been one of my most popular offerings each year, and I get very enthusiastic feedback every time I present it to teachers. If you'd like to see the wiki for one of these sessions, just click here. If you have a way to apply this approach for your own use, please leave a reply below. I'd love to hear about it!