Continuing Education – A Better Approach.
The very best professional development coordinator that I have ever worked with was a man who went by the name of Charles. He was our professional development coordinator at the time. He always had a wide range of pertinent speakers and collaborations available for selection. His selections were practical. They were innovative. The were authentic and allowed customization. People came from all over the country to bring great teaching pedagogy to our little corner of the world. We just didn’t know how good we had it. We talked in the blog yesterday about the wrong way to develop professional learning or to give it a more professional name – continuing education. Continuing education should include recertification options and also allow teachers to be able to choose from areas that interest them. If there is one thing I have learned during my life, if you are interested in it…you will be invested in its success. Instead of cookie cutter continuing education, we need to trust teachers and administrators in choosing the material which best help them on the front lines of education. So here are some ideas which maybe can help with this:
- Let the people in your building and system teach other teachers. I am absolutely astounded at the amount of money which school systems pay to people in advisory roles who come from outside the system, especially when qualified instructors exist in that system. I once read a book about teaching spelling. It was a great read. We paid the guy who wrote it to come to our system and talk about it. I had some notes jotted down just in preparation. I caught the speaker looking over my shoulder at my notes from his book. He was using my notes as his note cards for speaking! Ya’ll, I (and others) could have given the same talk and at no cost! If we are hiring well, then we should have experts in our own buildings. Here is a quote from Arthur Lydiard, maybe the best distance running coach on the planet, “There are champions everywhere. Every street’s got them. All we need to do is train them properly.” I believe that we have champions in every school, people who expertly know how to teach children in our communities.
- Teachers must have substantial direction in the topics for continuing education. This may be redundant, but if it needs to be said twice…maybe it is important. Great writers always write better when writing about things they love, and I believe the same goes for continuing education. I know doctors who have specialized in advocacy for abused children. They read everything they can get their hands on about it. If we are willing to let go of the current, one-size-fits-all training model and embrace the diversification of continuing education, we may well have experts in a dozen sub-specialties in our buildings instead of the entire staff being forced to be specialists in a single area. Imagine having a building with lots of experts in a toolbox instead of just a bunch of hammers.
- We must decide what kind of school system that we want to be. Our continuing education options need to reflect that. I hope for your sake, that you are not in a data driven school. It is a miserable experience, and data driven schools are often b-o-r-i-n-g. You will have quick success, a plateau in proficiency, and then a steady decline. Worse, students (who can) will exit to private schools which don’t play the numbers games. School systems which value creativity(a Montessori based approach if you will) need to offer options which reflect that. And those school systems are going to have to be willing to let teachers go to continuing education events that might well not be on the list the system had envisioned. And honestly, when folks at Central Office begin to select continuing education for their employees…How is a nice way to put this? People who have not been in a classroom in a decade shouldn’t be choosing topics for people who are in classrooms every day.
- We must realize that true PLCs develop at the grass roots levels. If we create a building culture which promotes innovation with high student expectations, teachers will meet on their own. My “PLCs” consisted of 2-3 informal groups in my building which had impromptu meetings, and also a group of folks outside of my building where we had running texts going about the field of education. I loved working with those people, and still go to them for advice even today. We come from all walks of life, but teaching young people is the focus of conversation.
- PLCs don’t have to meet in person. They can be text threads. Oddly enough, my very best conversations in education are via phone calls and texts.
- Authentic continuing education must be a custom fit plan for individual schools and for educators. We cannot expect one school to need the same continuing education plan as another. Schools will have different needs and maybe have different instructional delivery expectations. I think this is a major mistake that many central office planning teams make. One size does not fit all. While I would expect a central office walk-through to have some expected commonalities between schools, I would hope that we are not taking a cookie cutter approach to all schools. That is a great way to dumb down exceptional delivery – and I have seen that happen. I have seen administrators from central offices ask best practice to be removed from instruction in order to match instructional delivery from other schools. Ask me about math algorithms sometime? I can answer that question!!!
Pro Tip: Find a school which models how you want teaching to look. There are not a ton of Montessori based schools out there. You might have to look at a private school option. That said, there are some public schools which really favor creativity. Most of the time, one just has to ask. Everyone knows who that school is, because usually everyone wants to work there! Preferably, find a school that does things much differently than data driven schools. Their websites will not mention state testing. They will be proud of the diverse instruction at the school instead.
