One of the things that concerned me coming into my role as Curriculum Director two years ago was knowing which professional development opportunities were worth sending our folks to and which were a waste of the teachers’ time. Not surprisingly, I have been bombarded with advertisements for “essential PD” from all over the country. There is no way to know everything about all the PD, so it was natural to ask questions of the “experts” surrounding me including: teachers, instructional coaches, and other curriculum directors. The more I spoke with people, the more I was reassured that the folks that we work with everyday are some of the most beneficial resources for professional development we have.
We have been a “Professional Learning Community (PLC) District” for over a decade, but are just really starting to enjoy the power of that continuously embedded professional development because we are making the shift in many of our PLCs from discussing “what” we are teaching to “how” to teach a concept and “why” that particular pedagogical approach would be best. A shift in the conversations have allowed our teachers to really lean on each other’s expertise as they share best practices during these discussions. One of the key pieces to making this shift was being sure to have common planning time, as much as possible, within the teachers’ work day and to be sure to have scheduled weekly PLC.. By providing this embedded time, with the expectation the conversations focus on the “how” and “why”, we have given the teachers a chance to collaborate and it has helped to raise the collective teacher efficacy, one of Hattie’s larger effect sizes, within our PLC teams. This continuous and embedded professional development that is generated from high functioning PLC teams is key to tapping into the talents of our staff, however we have found a second way to take advantage of our staff’s strengths as well.
Each semester, I am in charge of organizing a Professional Development (PD) Day for our staff. As a teacher, I can remember one of my colleagues commenting that he “hopes that when he dies he passes during a PD Day, because the transition will be so seamless he will never know what hit him”. I didn’t want that sense of disconnect from a PD Day I was in charge of developing, so I leaned on my own 15 years in the classroom to think about what I found valuable. As a classroom teacher, I was always impressed with many of the student’s thinking and ability to make connections when I didn’t tell them what connections to make. In fact, if I stayed out of their way, they often made deeper connections to a topic than I would have considered. I wish I had done that more while in the classroom, but I did try to carry that idea over as a building principal.
As a principal, I kept those classroom experiences in mind when trying to lead continuous school improvement and I really bought into Rick DuFour & Michael Fullan’s observation, “If there is one consistent lesson that emerges from studies of the change process, it is that no one leader has all the energy and expertise to reform...a district, improve a school, or meet the needs of students in the classroom each day” (DuFour & Fullan, 2013, p. 24). Change, and the ability to sustain it, can’t come from one person, but must be brought about through nurturing the ideas of the teachers throughout the district. In the spirit of supporting schools as a greenhouse, we brought teachers together to discuss the importance of not losing our focus on student learning under the pressure of the current testing accountability system. What we came up with was a group that focused on nurturing the “roots” of our students such as problem solving, creativity, perseverance, and collaboration. This group of teachers became our “Roots Committee.” The Roots Committee is a forum for teachers to bring ideas that nurture our students. When an idea was brought to the group, a discussion ensued about how it could potentially impact our students, and volunteers created an “off-shoot” committee to dive deeper into investigating the potential of the idea. The following are three examples of impactful shifts in our school culture that were brought about from the Roots Committee: The elimination of class rank, the initiation of the independent learning experience, and the creation of our service learning class.
So, leaning on what I observed as a classroom teacher and what I gained as a building principal, a new PD format arose in our district. We decided that we needed to tap into our teachers’ talents as much as possible during these days and provide as much choice in the process because the teachers are the best at determining what they want and need. What we came up with was a day that allowed our teachers to work and learn together through PLC time during half the day and the other half of the day they would have the opportunities to dive deeper into something new. We took lead from the teachers’ needs by collecting ideas for potential PD sessions and, most importantly, asked if the teachers would be willing to facilitate those sessions. We also knew, that no matter what we “provided”, we could not meet everyone’s needs, so we thought “why not offer an ‘Independent Learning Experience’ during our PD days?”. I love this option because this allows individual teachers or PLC teams to develop their own PD and dive deeper into a topic of their choice. All they needed to do is share what they plan to research and how what they hope to learn will impact their teaching.
This is the third year of running our PD Day in this format and each year, I believe, the value of tapping into our teachers’ talents becomes more evident. As an example in this Fall’s November PD Sessions, there are 28 different opportunities to learn and 26 of those are being facilitated by our own staff. We also have over 40 different Independent Learning proposals submitted which are providing those teachers the opportunity to meet their own needs beyond what is offered by the district. The point I am making here is that I could have NEVER come up with as valuable and relevant of PD Day as what is taking place under this format if I brought in a “speaker” or “decided what our district needed” on my own. By tapping into our teachers’ talents and getting out of the way, I believe we have created opportunities for all of us to use this time to grow as professionals and truly make the time a “Professional Development Day”. I would also encourage you to consider how your district is tapping into the teachers’ talents, as it has made a difference for us.
References
DuFour, R. & Fullan, M. (2013). Cultures built to last: Systemic PLCs at work.
Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.
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