Professional Development (eye-opening or eye-rolling)
We at FUELS are wondering, in the last year - what has been your most and least favorite professional development???
Continued professional development (PD) is standard in most occupations to keep up with best practices. Teachers know that the beginning of a new school years is bombarded with trainings to brush off the dust of summer and get our heads back into teach-mode.
School districts must provide a set budget and hours for PD each school year, which is why quantity is usually preferred over quality. District Wide Trainings are traditionally a long day of general knowledge or “new” information, and updates in our fields. While there is information that is necessary, most is found to be repetitive, dull, and not useful for daily routines.
Edweek.org published an article less than a year ago about this very topic. It can be viewed here:
Teacher Professional Development, Explained (edweek.org)
The article contains many recent studies about educator’s response to PD and their level of effectiveness. It discusses a study published in 2022 by Harvard Graduate School of Education and Brown University’s findings, “professional development that focused on instructional practice—identifying key teaching strategies and providing support for carrying out those changes in the classroom—was generally more effective for improving student performance than professional learning that focused solely on building teachers’ content knowledge in their subjects.”
Also, PD was considered “most effective” by TEACHERS when the instruction-focused training was directly tied to MATERIALS that the teachers already use or was given to use daily in their classrooms. In addition, planned follow-ups sessions increased the effectiveness as well.
In addition to effective trainings, the article explored the concept and helpfulness of having academic coaches for teachers to utilize. Coaching was largely impactful to newer teachers, and/or teachers in new grade levels.
Last week, thanks to FUELS, several teachers and educators had the ability to attend several trainings led by educational coach, DJ Nicholson, founder of Inclusiveology. All the trainings provided materials for the participants and planned follow-up sessions to explore their experiences up to that point. Each training focused on a very specific modality for the classroom like, inclusion, low & high-tech tools, differentiated instruction, and routines.
Giving teachers the tools and training needed to be more well-rounded for their students is much easier said than done. Student’s needs vary widely in every classroom. Learning styles comes in so many different forms that it can be a daily struggle to keep up with the demand. Enriching and useful professional development often give the boost needed to keep teachers on track and motivated to enhance learning in different ways.
We at FUELS are wondering, in the last year - what has been your most and least favorite professional development???