Balance In Professional Development

As I wrote last night, I'm all wound up about releasing of first Flipped PD release on Tuesday. Tonight I was reading the Chief Learning Officer magazine and many of the articles focus on informal learning. The latest article I read - Unlock the Next Wave of Productivity - really drives home the importance of new shifts in what training should look like.

Only by enabling informal learning will organizations meet demands for greater flexibility and more learner-driven content.

While that article said what I wanted to hear (yes, you're on the right track), it also reminded me of meeting the needs of all learners. Our professionals come from different generations, have different learning styles and come with different levels of technology skills. How do we move forward and still respect the more traditional thinking folks? Hiring substitutes for teachers to go to training is an expensive non-scaleable solution, but you take advantage of it when you have it as an option. Inservice time in another popular avenue, per the survey I posted last night, but with assessments, new curriculum, interventions...a lot of development time is spoken for before the first student registers in August. Again, you take advantage of the time you have, like the middle school scheduled me for a January afternoon two weeks ago. I really want to do a summer Ed Camp or some sort of learning institute - hoping we can get approval for that this spring. Personally I need to work on being a more engaging speaker. I know my stuff, I'm patient, but I need to make sure my delivery isn't just loud (as I'm told it can be from time to time.

When else? This afternoon I spoke with Derrel Fincher about the importance of meeting teachers where they are and growing them for there. How do I meet them and get them to move along if their traditional expectations for professional development melt away? How can I best balance out all our learning offerings?