For the last few months when a political ad wasn't on, there have been a few different ads running from Exxon on the importance of investing in our teachers. Is it just a feel-good ad campaign from Big Oil, or is this really happening somewhere? For the last several years I've been hearing about how important Professional Learning Communities are. Outside the bubble of Lincolnshire, IL who's really doing a PLCs in a way that is deep and meaningful? The DuFours have even admitted that the term is losing its meaning. Now the concept of becoming a Connected Educator with a Personal Learning Network is becoming popular, but districts still block Twitter and Facebook.
I've never heard anyone involved in education say that professional development isn't important. It's just done really poorly.
Here is a portion of Learning Forward's proposed definition of Professional Development for the reauthorization of NCLB.
primarily occurs several times per week among established teams of teachers, principals, and other instructional staff members where the teams of educators engage in a continuous cycle of improvement
occurs several times per week
continuous cycle of improvement
These are the phrases that stick out the most to me. Professional/Personal Learning must occur at least twice a week in order to create a continuous cycle of improvement. What I've seen in 10 years are professional development events. My second year we got some big-wig to drive up to Wisconsin from Chicago to do his day-long song and dance. I'm sure that was at least $2,000 out of the district. He came, he talked at us and nothing was ever done with what he had to share after that. Same thing in my next district - learning happened around October 15th. We had early release on Wednesdays, but that was often wasted. Most districts would kill for a weekly early release, but it was used for sit-n-git all staff or department meetings. Later on there was some good work being done on two of the Wednesdays a month.
Now in my current district we have a lot of professional development days and we're talking about creating learning pathways for teachers to choose from - instead of top down dictates. Eureka! This is a good first step. Now how do we get learning going "several times a week?"Flipped PD is a start, but can't be it. How do we get folks together to get better if there is no common planning time at some levels? How do we create a learning culture? I think these are questions that apply to almost all districts. How do we permanently move beyond the professional development events? Sticks aren't going to get the job done.
My hope from a technology integration stand point is to change the roles of the library media specialists to help move the district toward using Google Apps. This will be a huge endeavorer and a great opportunity to set up learning sessions with clear goals to build teacher capacity. Hopefully this will set a new standard in how professional learning can happen several times a week. We know there's a lot to do and learn about improving assessments. Plenty to do with common core alignment. Now we need to get moving and not just talk about how important professional development is.
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