June 15, 2023

Step 1 of this series was published on May 15, 2023.

Teachers hold the power and potential to radically change students and help them grow into imaginative thinkers and problem-solvers. While the cost of professional development (PD) is warranted, the execution of PD is woefully inadequate and all too often does not shift teaching practice, let alone student outcomes. More importantly, most professional development does not model best practices in teaching or cultivate 21st Century collaboration and problem-solving skills, which are the very skills we say we want to pass on to students. 

What if professional development were seamlessly integrated into the day-to-day operation of every school? What if schools collaborated to bring together relevant training? What if professional learning was about not just developing skills but solving challenges and breaking down barriers to teacher and student success? What if the acts of learning and growing as teachers were joyful? 

When done well, professional development (PD) can keep people in the profession, help address teacher burnout, and improve the conditions for teaching and learning. The first step to more meaningful professional development is adding the time and structure for the systematic implementation of inspirational PD. The second step is to honor the individuality of staff members and replace district-mandated training with goal-oriented, personalized PD that simultaneously cultivates new skills while elevating the expertise of educators.  

Goal Oriented & Personalized

As more and more schools embrace the ‘Portrait of a Graduate’ as a way for students to document growth and proficiency, teachers need a ‘Portrait of a Teacher’ that encourages the same focus on reflection, growth, and proficiency. Rather than professional development as an extra that is completed for license renewal or training tacked on because we have to do something, let’s embed teacher improvement, and therefore PD, into our day-to-day conversations on teaching and learning. Great professional development should be, as Joel Backon, editor of Intrepid, noted in this very publication,

“informed by the needs and goals of the school and individual teachers and implemented in a manner that leads to improved practices and better decision-making.”

Joel Backon

Whether you utilize the Danielson or Marzano models or something else entirely, the art and science of teaching require us to reflect on our practice and detail steps for improvement. This process of reflection is a perfect way to embed professional learning. As teachers draft personal goals, they can research potential professional development that supports their achieving those goals. As administration and peers conduct learning walks and formal evaluations, they can identify potential PD resources for targeted skills improvement. 

From those recommendations, staff selects professional development that targets a specific learning goal. This may require more flexible definitions of what constitutes professional development. Certainly, taking a class or attending a workshop/conference that focuses on this specific goal counts. Reading a book, listening to a podcast, or observing another teacher should also be considered valid forms of professional development. It’s in the day-to-day that real change occurs and not in the big, one-off events. Provide a tracking log and/or a template for reflection, and then celebrate and share new ideas via a demonstration of learning (see below). However, you embed accountability and encourage the steady beat of self-improvement to pace PD. 

Schools can further support teachers by compiling a simple spreadsheet of teacher goals and then connecting teachers who are working on similar skills. Those teachers can share resources, have meet-ups (perhaps in place of traditional staff meetings), and brainstorm the application of ideas. Any time they spend collaborating and growing together must count toward professional learning hours. 

This process adds more transparency to evaluations and teacher growth. Rather than an intimidating process discussed two or three times per year, normalize conversations about ongoing growth and acquisition of new skills. No one is perfect, and everyone can get better. The best professional athletes continue to train and seek coaching to improve their skills. Similarly, “teachers enjoy learning new things” explains Backon, “but perceive their time to do so as being very limited. Some teachers even believe that a heavy dose of PD suggests that they might have professional inadequacies. It is the outgrowth of a fixed rather than a growth mindset and a culture that has forgotten that the well-being of their teachers is as important as that of their students.” This growth mindset—the very mindset we want to nurture in our students—needs to be at the heart of our staff development.

All that said, we don’t know what we don’t know. There is a need for sharing new ideas, especially when research proves the efficacy of certain teaching practices. District and school leaders can help staff keep up with evolving research and emerging trends (see below for possible methods of dissemination). As staff adopt new ideas and seek training, a great way to share new ideas, practices, and resources is by tapping into in-house expertise.

Elevate the ideas and expertise of individuals (to help enrich others)

As you plan any staff gathering—be it a meeting or an in-service/PD Day—look in-house first. Your own staff can model best practices, share cool resources, and demonstrate the best tech. The benefits of this shift in professional development are huge: 

1. Save money: Rather than spending thousands, even tens of thousands, on outside “experts” (many of whom lack classroom experience and none of whom know your staff or students), redirect those funds to support individual teacher PD. Send teachers to workshops; buy books for book studies; pay teachers for out-of-contract time to design professional learning experiences for their peers. You will MORE than reap what you sow.
2. Celebrate your staff: Few things are as validating as being told, “You’re really good at this. Can you share with others?” Simply put, tapping into your in-house experts is a great way to celebrate their awesomeness and increase their job satisfaction.   

As staff explore their own paths for PD (tied to their evaluation goals), make plans to share and celebrate their growth and learning. Here are a few ideas:

Action-Oriented Staff Meetings

Say it with me: No more staff meetings where information is read from a Slidedeck. No more staff meetings for the sake of having a staff meeting. Create one resource to house weekly or bi-weekly updates. This can be as simple as a PowerPoint or Slidedeck that adds one slide for each week, which ensures that all the content from the year is in one easy-to-access spot (this is also how I led my classroom). Bullet point reminders and embedded short videos can share updates. Link to resources and emphasize tasks to be completed. THEN: Use staff meetings to share out best practices, resources, and new learning. 

In addition to sharing their learning, ask staff members to facilitate gatherings, which further highlights the diverse talents of the faculty. Some may use a tech tool, others an activity, and still others will offer more traditional approaches. Each meeting should feature at least ONE resource, tool, or technique (modeled by a teacher) as well as one discussion protocol (facilitated by a teacher).  

Regardless of how you stimulate the discussion, make sure the initial sharing is short—no longer than 5-15 minutes. Dedicate the bulk of your time together to brainstorm ways to use that modeling and consider the following questions: What challenges could this new idea help solve? What would it look like in the classroom? How can the resource be used in a new way? 

Conference/Workshop Show & Tell 

Any staff who attends any training session must present a 3-5 minute show and tell: Show one tool, resource, or idea from the training and tell how you’ve integrated that learning into the classroom. Show what it looks like in action and tell how students respond. Then link to the appropriate standards and outline implementation. After the training session, faculty brainstorm how THEY would utilize this resource to benefit students. 

Working with Lessons that WORK

Make learning walks part of your PD. Encourage staff to visit each other’s classrooms. Each month, identify a theme/topic. Introduce the topic in a staff meeting via an article, video, or podcast resource for staff to explore. Discuss what the theme/topic looks like in the classroom. Create a list of in-house examples of that topic in action: Staff can share something they do or something someone else does. Make a map of the school highlighting where and when that topic will be on display and encourage (require) learning walks to at least TWO of those destinations per year. You can have a little fun by making a learning walks passport with a special stamp for each month’s topic/skill. Fill your passport by the end of the year and celebrate.

Flip Learning Warehouse

Use a tool like Flip.com to curate a collection of learning. Make different “assignments” for various PD topics. Share the Flip.com class with all staff. For PD, staff must share their monthly learning in the appropriate Flip “assignment” AND watch 1-3 videos of their colleagues. Topics may include student engagement, PBL, equity, engaging parents, work/life balance, and any other topics that staff have identified as personal growth goals. 

Use EdPuzzle (or a similar tool) for “required” content. Yes, there is content all staff needs to hear. How much of that content could be done as video updates? Make a quick “quiz” and ask staff to share their learning. 

Professional Learning Ed Camp

Generate 3-5 topics people would like to discuss: Tools, resources, strategies, students who are struggling, and challenges that are impacting students and/or teachers, for instance. Then, Ed Camp a discussion: Assign each topic of conversation to a different room or part of one room. Staff choose where they want to go and share what they know about that topic. If you gather topics ahead of time, you can have a few sample resources ready for each group. 

One challenge is balancing autonomy with bonding—solo work with time together as a team. One lesson learned via the COVID pandemic is that magic happens when people are physically together. There’s a spark that virtual conversations and online forums can’t quite replicate. As much as I relish the quest for self-fulfillment and individualized training, whole-group gatherings are necessary, for the camaraderie, to guarantee everyone hears the same message, and to help spark further ideas. 

For all of the ideas above, maintain a clear implementation plan (see Step 1 article). Dedicate time and provide a support structure, like the Educator Canvas, to increase implementation and encourage teachers to play with new ideas and resources. 

Professional learning needs to be about growth, and you cannot improve without testing out new ideas. By focusing on personalized, goal-oriented PD that highlights the expertise of staff and nurtures a culture of sharing, modeling, and collaborating, we can elevate the role and efficacy of professional development.