Be of Use

What does good professional development look like? I've struggled with this question during my decade as a professional educator. Some of the questions I've asked myself or discussed with others is - Before school? During school? After school?  Compensated? Contractually compelled? Not compensated? At will participation? The better question is - how does the learning take place - not when or why. If we preach to our teachers to change how they are doing things in the classroom, it's pretty disingenuous to set up professional learning in a lecture hall/auditorium setting, or a 40 minute demo with time afterward to "give it a try." My last full day of the 2012-2013 school year, was my most proud because I think the team I worked with got professional learning right. It was a leadership retreat, rather than a data focused retreat this year. My director laid out the videos she wanted to share to get the building leadership teams to - for lack of a better ...

Like other folks, I was surprised and annoyed about the end of life announcement on Google Reader. This is something I use everyday (but I guess I'm only one of a few thousand...not several million) and I rely on it for getting a great deal of good ideas sent directly to me. Tonight I had a thought that it might be a good thing. Did Google Reader stunt my own growth and curiosity to read about what many others have to say? There's tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands or more...) of educators out there sharing what they're doing, what they're thinking about but don't have the bully pulpit of Larry Cuban or Will Richardson. It certainly doesn't mean they have lesser things to say. Mostly they right about their own action research they're doing right now - very useful things to read for practitioners. In the last few weeks I've divorced myself from Reader and used other avenues to get my information from. Tonight I came upon this nice post on I ...

I'm sold on personalized learning for kids. As a parent I see everyday, if you give kids the opportunity to create and explore they take off with it. Adults, that's a different story. We've already been programmed to learn a certain way. This past winter (well we're still technically in winter...) I lead a professional development day starting with a keynote on Digital Literacy. In my email to the staff a week ahead of time I listed the learning resources and clearly stated that this would be self-directed learning time. After my presentation, I go off to the library to facilitate and I have 50 teachers staring at me waiting to start. Be free my children...go off and learn. Easier said than done. How do we break people of the habits they've learned over decades of schooling K through a Master's Degree, on to professional learning events? Putting together/curating resources is easy. The adult learning...that's the hard part. I think having personal learn...

It's funny that I started this rant on January 3rd, then on January 4th this post appears on All Things PLC - Creating Buy-In for PLCs ---------------------------------------------- "The OSEP (Office of Special Education Programs) Technical Assistance Center on the SWPIS website (www.pbis.org) suggests that before schools begin implementing any sort of system change, they achieve at least 80 percent buy-in from building staff" (Windram, Bollman & Johnson, 2012). 80%! Really? In the book How RTI Works in Secondary Schools:Building a Framework for Success  authors Holly Windram, Kerry Bollman and Sara Johnson cite reliable sources - Mike Schmoker ( Results Now ) and Anthony Muhammed ( Transforming School Culture )  on the importance of buy-in. I'm not questioning the importance of buy-in. After a great deal of reading and seeing change flounder in different settings, I'm just starting to wonder what kind of Herculean effort is needed to pull it off? Windr...