Professional
Development has been around for quite some time. Yet, have we taken the time to
fully understand its full potential for our professional educators? I think we
can take our PD to the next level by implementing few changes with our current
format. Professional Development has been around for quite some time. Yet, have we taken the time to fully understand its full potential for our professional educators?
Build PD into the
school day: Redesign your school day to incorporate Professional
Development to take place during the regular school hours. You can at least use
the time your staff arrives to school to the start of the academic day as
protected PD Time. IF you are a Professional Learning Communities (PLC)
district, you may already be doing this.
Tech Café:
Embed technology Professional Development into the lunch hour. Here you can
invite teachers to participate in PD while they eat lunch. Schedule multiple sessions
during a specific date (Eventually leading to monthly Tech Café sessions). You can
provide lunch for the staff or they can simply bring their lunch to the PD
session. Survey the staff to determine their
technology PD needs. Lead learners can facilitate these sessions! Our teachers
truly appreciate this monthly focus on Tech PD.
Edcamp style PD:
Use the UN-Conference style PD for your building or school district. Organize the
event based on needs, wants, and desires of those attending the professional
development. Pre-determine the location and space for each PD session.
Determine the length of each breakout session and decide how many sessions you
want to have that particular day. Allow
for the participants to sign up to present on topics of interest. It will
create an opportunity for teachers, technical support staff, administrators,
and community members to lead out and facilitate relevant PD for your
community. You will be amazed at the level of involvement with will create with
your school community!
Host a Gallery
Walk: This is great when you have a limited or set amount of time to
work with Professional Development. Set aside PD time for your staff to share
out in a 45 to 60 minute session. Pre-determine what areas you want to “showcase”
or expand upon with your staff. Then allow for your teachers to move from “station”
to “station” learning about the designated topics. Your staff can easily serve
as the facilitator for the given stations. You can also use district experts to
assist with hosting a gallery walk station.
By simply redesigning the format of our Professional
development, you can accomplish two primary goals: 1. Create consumer driven
professional development, and 2. Create a more authentic professional
development for our staff and community. I am curious to learn what you are
doing with your school’s Professional Development design!
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