The amount of money spent per teacher on Professional Development each year does not represent the growth (or lack-of) happening in the classroom. Districts are spending thousands of dollars on the exact style of learning teachers are told NOT to do. As educators, we are supposed to provide an engaging and collaborative lessons, but are required to attend professional development sessions that don’t follow these same practices.
The content of the PD sessions is usually a new teaching strategy or technique to help students grow and succeed in the classroom. Unfortunately, teachers lose momentum soon after the initial training and fail to implement these new strategies. This is due to lack of support during implementation from those who are masters of the skill.
Teaching the Teachers Effective Professional Development in an Era of High Stakes Accountability gives five principles that Professional Development must follow in order to be effective.
- The duration of the PD must be significant and on-going. Teachers will not be masters of the strategy after the first lesson.
- Teachers need support when they are implementing the strategy, not just when they are learning about it.
- ‘Teach’ the teachers the same way as the students. PD should be engaging, collaborative, and include active participation.
- Model the strategy. Teachers benefit from seeing what successful implementation looks like.
- The PD should be content specific. The broad PD sessions should be eliminated and have real-world examples shown.
The ultimate goal of Professional Development is to update teacher practices to help students grow in the classroom. In order to help our students, we must first help the teachers.