One hundred sixty one teachers and TA’s plus five administrators and one national presenter. Today was our first superintendent’s conference day on the Thoughtful Classroom strategies, tomorrow is the second. It’s my plan, I stuck my neck out to convince our administrative team and superintendent that this is where we need to go next. I negotiated the deal, researched and evaluated the plan, and set everything up.
And today I watched. I worried about every learner. I tried to monitor. I felt frustrated that people might miss the point, fail to realize the application possibilities of the strategies modeled, or worse, think they already know everything so what have they got to learn? I wanted to overstate the obvious and point out that this is the ticket to the “motivation” and “engagement” they complain about. I wanted to stop the presenter and tell teachers how the strategies work, I wanted to construct meaning for them, I wanted to shout, “please pay attention and do this for our students!”
Instead I participated as a learner and I listened. I let them construct their own meaning, as adult learners. I realize that some will try the strategies next week, some will need more time to learn, some won’t do anything differently no matter what I offer. So I’ll build in more time for learning opportunities, for learning clubs, for coaching and for follow up. I’ll work with building administrators to make teachers more accountable for the teaching strategies that they do choose to use.
The real difference between professional development for adults and teaching students? Teachers will go back to their classrooms on Thursday and make their own decisions about what happens there. Unless we spend a significant amount of time as administrators talking about the initiatives, encouraging participation, offering additional support through learning clubs and coaching, looking for it on evaluative tools–who’s to say anything will change?
I sincerely hope that all of our work in school improvement this year leads to teachers becoming more and more skillful at the art and science of teaching. I hope that I’m not just influencing those who are already our best and brightest, our most avid learners, our most interested in improving. I’ll hope that through professional development, coaching, and accountability, we can significantly influence what happens in every classroom in G-Town, every day. Ultimately, it’s up to every teaching professional in our employ to get it right, even when the door is closed. I’m thankful for every teacher and TA who I know will make it happen.
To go along with this, when you think about PD from the perspective of teachers as students, the presenter has the same responsibilities in terms of good teaching that we have in the classroom every day. As a teacher, I am endlessly frustrated at PD that amounts to being lectured to about how to not lecture my kids! The best PD gives us a chance to experience what we are being asked to take into the classroom.
You are correct! As a teacher we assign practice to assure that the “student” will apply the strategies we teach. When we do PD, it is impossible to know who applies the strategies and if they are applying it correctly. I have asked that teachers integrate a PD sample practice into an instructon that I can observe.
I started a recent PD session I led by sharing quotes on student learning and motivation. I asked teachers to highlight any phrases that really stuck with them and then share them out in partners. After a great conversation, I explained that they were my students that day. That I wouldn’t be grading them, there was no high stakes test but that the same hopes that they had for their students in learning, I had for them that day.
I’ve wondered a great deal lately about the impact of PD on those that matter the most – students. As someone who leads a team of staff developers, I worry even more that we continue to refine what we do and offer high quality professional development to our districts and our teachers. PD is hard work, made even harder when it is not an experience that models for teachers the things that they might bring back to the classroom.
I think it will start with the best and brightest but with the administrative support you have in place, the work that you do will change as well. And I can’t wait to see it happen!