Sitting in today's "professional development" I got bored! Just plain and simple! No fault to our principal or SBTL, but to the school district which seems to hand out cans of professional development, like cans of pork-n-beans!
I do have a few suggestions for PDs
1. Allow teachers time to converse with each other over pedagogy. We should bring student work samples and come up with real plans and entertain real suggestions for how we can maximize the potential of our children.
2. Permit teachers to converse with other grade teachers, subject area teachers and specialists in order to get a real idea of the teaching and learning that goes on outside of our individual bubbles. We should leave that session with a greater sense of community and understanding of the goings-on in our buildings.
3. Coordinate grade group and subject area PDs around the district. A few years back all of the 6th grade teachers in the district went to a school. I am still grateful for and employing the suggestions for teaching and learning I received from colleagues there!
4. There most definitely should be time allotted for us to spend in our classrooms. To assume that a 45 minute prep is sufficient and that work should be done outside of the work day is "bafoonery" at its finest! While we do what we can and when, never assume that this "should" be done!
So those are just but a few suggestions that I have to make professional development meaningful! Meaningful to me does not mean sitting through a webinar or analyzing data. Call that a "meeting" but not professional development!
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