If you watch the show Abbott Elementary, the opening episode of the current season really hits home. “Professional Development Day is my favorite day of the year!” said no teacher ever. Why is that?
As a new teacher, I was horrified by the jaded attitudes of the veterans around me, but now that I am one of those jaded veterans, I get it. If you’ve been in the game long enough, you’ve sat through enough irrelevant PowerPoints being read to you, heard the same content repackaged with at least three new names, and done enough annoying icebreakers that would make anyone a little blasé about seeing required professional development on the calendar.
This shouldn’t need to be said aloud, but teachers are adult professionals with limited time. Most of us are required by our states and districts to complete a certain amount of training per year. We want our professional development to reflect our needs. Therefore, the best professional development for teachers is flexible, relevant, timely, actionable,and collaborative.
One positive legacy of the COVID-19 pandemic is that more professional development is now flexible in both time and place. Many national conferences that I would never have been able to attend before are now available via Zoom, and asynchronous training is available for those who cannot attend in-person trainings. Great professional development won’t happen if it doesn’t fit within the schedules of the people who need it.
One of the most important factors when choosing or designing teacher professional development is its relevance. Many teachers are forced to attend trainings that are not applicable to their content or grade level. Understandably, people tune out of these meetings. One way to ensure relevance is to allow teachers to choose opportunities that are right for them. Supporting teachers’ curiosity and personal development goals should be a priority for administrators and districts, not an afterthought.
If the training is not timely, that learning is much less likely to be implemented. You might think training teachers about the beginning of the year should happen in August, but most teachers develop their plans over the summer and don’t have time in the week before school starts to revamp their game plan. Additionally, training people just once on a technique is less likely to lead to lasting change. Short bursts of “interval” training with meaningful follow-up in a coaching model is much more likely to get the desired results.
Most importantly, great professional development should be actionable. One of the best teachers I know who also trains other teachers has a goal of always giving people at least one tool they can add to their toolbox and put into action in their classrooms the next day. There is no magic pill that will solve all your teaching problems, but training should be an opportunity to learn a new method, improve an existing practice, or gain a new insight.
Teachers consistently remark that the best part of professional development is getting to collaborate with other teachers and learn how they are approaching the same challenges. This kind of sharing can happen organically, but creators of professional development would do well to intentionally create opportunities for teachers to share solutions and approaches when planning their sessions.
We all want our time in training to be useful and to give us methods or information that will make a positive impact on our students. By keeping these factors in mind, teacher trainers can make great professional development, and that matters now more than ever.
Want some ideas about different models of teacher professional development? Check out this blog post from Elmhurst University.
Alexis Gross is an 8th grade European History teacher in Fort Worth, Texas. She has taught Social Studies for 21 years with a focus on literacy, language acquisition, and critical thinking.
