Breaking Out of the Mold

Throughout my journey in education, my biggest frustration has been the hours and hours of professional development that I have sat through that has had absolutely no impact on my music classroom or is a repeated course because I am a veteran teacher. For instance, I just spent an entire teacher workday in a training about curriculum writing and UbD. There were a couple huge issues with the day. Number one, I was paid during the summer to write our music curriculum. It was finished. The training was for all the areas that had not done this yet. It didn't matter. We sat through the training. It was my 5th session on UbD as well. The SAME course 5 times!! Why? The newer teachers needed the training. So, we sat through the training. It was a completely frustrating and wasted day. This happens a lot more than my district and administrators would like to admit.

I work for an amazing district. That does have a lot of positive things in the world of professional development. Our digital learning coaches are really trying to look outside the box and create new and different experiences for teachers. We have "pool-side" online courses, coffee chats, self selected PLC groups, and badges to earn with google and robotics. However, we still have a long way to go to break out of the traditional professional development mold as a district.

Professional development can not be a "sit & get" session with a "one size fits all" approach anymore. Every educator is different with different needs for their classroom. Research shows that this model is not helping teachers grow and is definitely not leading to higher student achievement. The presentation below shares a bit of the research and information about the new "go & show" model of effective professional learning and how the 5 Principles of Effecting Professional Development can help us achieve this goal.

In trying to decide what type of presentation I would create, I considered a lot of different formats. I actually began working on a PowToons, a Prezi, and ended up creating a PowerPoint because it seemed like the best option for accessibility and live delivery. PowToons is on of my favorite tools for presentations, but if i were to deliver this presentation to a real audience, like administrators, I wanted it to be something I could adjust the speed and delivery. My real PowerPoint is full of fancy fonts and transitions. I had to simplify it to embed it here. Fonts just don't transfer from different computers well. If I was presenting this face to face, I would also go back and take some of the words off the slides. Busy slides make sleepy audiences. I can say what I need to say face to face and have it make a lot more impact than reading a slide.

References:

French, V. W. (1997). Teachers must be learners, too: Professional development and national teaching standards. NASSP bulletin, 81(585), 38-44.

Gulamhussein, A. (2013). Teaching the teachers: Effective professional development in an era of high stakes accountability. Center for Public Education, 1-47. Retrieved from http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/Main-Menu/Staffingstudents/Teaching-the-Teachers-Effective-Professional-Development-in-an-Era-of-High-Stakes-Accountability/Teaching-the-Teachers-Full-Report.pdf

Jacob, A., & McGovern, K. (2015). The Mirage: Confronting the hard truth about our quest for teacher development. TNTP. Retrieved from http://tntp.org/publications/view/evaluation-and-development/the-mirage-confronting-the-truth-about-our-quest-for-teacher-development