Three things I found to be insightful are:
- Districts are recognizing that the days of district driven "sit and get" professional development are behind us. Teachers need their own personalized learning, and that equates to giving them choice. Teaching professionals know what they need and want to improve their craft.
- Teachers are spending an enormous amount of their own time and money to learn outside of contract hours with little to no recognition or credit.
- Teachers are asking for role models and coaches for continuous and consistent support with technology integration.
- I am proud of the recent steps my district has taken to bring back internal professional development offerings taught by teachers, district leaders, and other professionals. Teachers get the choice they want, and they get to receive training from their colleagues who have experience with district curriculum, goals, and policies. A lingering problem is once the day is over, there is inadequate support for teachers. Also, it puts undo burden on teachers who teach full time and then have to prepare and give professional development. I would like to see more coaching positions to provide the needed support and to alleviate some of the PD teaching load.
- Currently, at the building level there are a few teachers who have been identified as tech competent who field day-to-day tech questions, but it makes it difficult to provide adequate support when you have the responsibility of your regular classroom in addition to that. I, again, think that additional coaches would resolve some of the issues associated with this model.
- One of the districts in the article has a staff development teacher in each school. I would like to know if that is their only job or if they are full time teachers, as well. I am aware that the financial impact of paying to have a coach in each school is probably not realistic, but I would like to hear how other schools handle that situation.
The article can be accessed here
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