GSU Blogger - Dr. S. Kahrs
Wednesday, October 7, 2015
Professional Development
The more I read the articles and research on teacher preparation, retention, support, and professional, the more I realize we really need to re-think professional development. Last week, I was told that we would need to work with our feeder high school to prepare a professional development workshop for all the teachers during this block that teachers had free. When the coaches met, we realize that it was going to be difficult considering that the teachers needs varied and our school focuses were different. So we pondered looking for some common needs because we knew that we had to do professional development regardless. We finally settled on a professionally development topic, however, I am frustrated with the fact that leaders never consider the real needs of the teachers. I felt this time could have been used for teachers to plan and collaborate. Instead, we are occupying two hours of their time with a topic that we felt was general enough to cover several grade spans in order to satisfy our job duties and responsibilities.
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LaTonya,
ReplyDeleteI am not sure if this will help you but our school pulls our needs from our department chairs and our teachers. We look at our LSPI for the school and ask for input of other staff at our school. If this is our expectation, then what staff development does your curriculum group need to be successful in the implementation plan of our LSPI and RBES. I would suggest getting the input of your department chairs and other leaders in your school as to what your goals should be (LSPI and RBES). As Assistant Principals, we meet multiple times throughout the summer and end of the year to determine our LSPI and focus for the upcoming year. Then we bring it to our department chairs. The department chairs then meet with their department to get their input. Although everything may not be included, the teachers have great ideas and they should be heard. Once the LSPI is drawn up, AP's and Department Chairs bring it to our departments where the teachers help create the RBES goals for themselves. This way you create buy in as well as accountability. After the RBES is complete, we then have a survey that gets distributed to each curriculum group to ask for their needs on the staff development. We are fortunate to be a Title I school were we have a lot of funding for staff development and most of the time we are able to give the teachers what they need.
We are moving towards a personalized learning approach to professional development at my school in preparation for moving towards one-to-one device implementation. To help us get started, I am in the process of creating a teacher assessment tool that will allow teachers to rate themselves as a Beginner, Intermediate or Proficient and we will have accompanying activities, lessons and reflection for each level.
ReplyDeleteLaTonya,
ReplyDeleteI am in a very similar situation right now. We have a teacher development day next Tuesday and I am in charge of delivering an hour presentation on PBIS. Yesterday, I sent out a Google Form to all of the teachers with some questions about what they needed or wanted to hear about. I told them that I wanted to make our hour together as productive as possible and that I want to talk about what they needed help in the most. I have had about 80% response right now with some great feedback. I am using their comments to design the professional development.
LaTonya
ReplyDeleteI think we all agree that there just isn't time to do all we need to do and we want our time to be well spent. I like JP's idea about reaching out to teachers to get input on what their needs, concerns, wants are. This would make for more involvement across the board. Maybe during that 2 hour session you could do break out sessions and allow departments to spend time together. Just a thought
Do you all have an articulation process or a vertical teaming? They might be bale to assist with common needs of your teachers
ReplyDelete