Professional Development Day

Once a month, teachers within our county participate in what is known as Professional Development Day (at the elementary and middle schools); at the high school level, this day is known as Learning Team Meetings Day. The purpose of this day is to engage teachers in discussion of strategies and techniques that will help to enhance their instruction, as well as generate discussions on behalf of the teachers regarding curriculum alignment, sharing best practices and most important, data analysis.

On Thursday, I had the opportunity to open our session with a presentation entitled, "The Purpose of Professional Development." Our Professional Development Team felt that overall, teachers were losing their focus on why we have these designated days and therefore, seemed to not take the importance of these days as meaningful time to learn and hone their knowledge base and skill set. Therefore, I was left with the task of bringing the teachers back to the "middle ground" or understanding of why this element of education was important.

One thing I have found to be valid and almost like a truth serum is when you are discussing issues involving teachers, students and education, is to always include the teachers in your discussion. "Put it back on them" is what I call it. So, I first began my presentation by asking the teachers to provide their own definition of "professional development." At first, the audience was silent, then teachers began to participate, providing answers such as "self-improvement" and "professional growth." Then, I asked them to verbally illustrate what professional development "looks like." I was amazed at some of their responses - collaborating, team discussions, sharing best practices; all tools that research states is important to creating effective professional development programs.

Nevertheless, the teachers were grouped by department and left with the task of analyzing student data from recent district diagnostic assessments. There were a series of questions that each department had to complete regarding their assigned activities; most important, each department had to present a brief synopsis of their study during our wrap-up session, in which all teachers had to report back to our general session location; administrators also participated in the training as well.

This training session really spoke a lot to me. It affirmed the importance of being involved in professional development at all levels - if you are only giving "lip service" to the issue at hand, your teachers will know it and not take the matter seriously. Second, I learned a lot from the small group discussions which helped me to gain a broader understanding of teachers' perceptions regarding data and their utilization of this information in instructional practices.

This session was enlightening and helped me to gain a better understanding of teachers' needs and how we can not only ascertain these needs, but align trainings that are conductive to fostering teacher growth and efficacy.