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 ...

Doug Johnson let me hook myself to his star as we collaborated on a Danielson style rubric for technology integration. Like in her framework, the highest levels of instruction have the students leading the way and doing the heavy intellectual lifting. Same applies here - when students are actively engaged with using the technology for deep learning you're meeting the distinguished mark.  Doug's column on it is published in this month's issue of Educational Leadership, with a link to the rubric we worked on. Take a look. Please, feel free to use! Article is here http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar13/vol70/num06/Technology-Skills-Every-Teacher-Needs.aspx Rubric is here http://www.ascd.org/ASCD/pdf/journals/ed_lead/el201303_johnson_rubric.pdf

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...

The following video was Tweeted by Jessica Johnson ( @ PrincipalJ , http://principalj.blogspot.com/ )   the other night. It had quite an impact on me. It's two minutes...take a look. "...and remember, we'll be watching" Only a vendor could get away with making a video like this. Not ASCD, ISTE, AWSA...because this video has the potential to scare the living daylights out of some teachers. I agree with everything said in it. It's what I want for every kid, especially our two boys. But maybe this is a sign I'm not as tough as I think I am. If I were considering this for an all-staff meeting or a training session I'd sit down at night, have a beer and think REALLY hard about whether or not to show this. My first reaction was that this would have been perfect to kick-off iPad training in my former district. But it might have completely shut some folks down. A friend of mine told me her principal said to the staff that "you can't leave your ...