Confronting Ineffective Professional Development
Why should we undertake a course of change?
At the time of this project, I have been in education for eight years, which at some points felt very long. I have deeply enjoyed making a lasting impression on each student and would not trade the experience; however, I personally have seen many injustices take place in professional learning. Many times good teachers were castigated for not using the latest fads from the company en vogue. New teachers were overloaded with incomprehensible data that was fallaciously linked to the importance of these new methods. Multiple evaluation goals were set for teachers , who never had a chance to meet them, because they were based on these new methods or tools that teachers never had time to fully develop. I personally have witnessed unjust Instructional Coaches and other school leaders use the incomplete goals as grounds to end a career. They fully believed in their process of operation. Ironically, they scratch their collective heads and wonder why teachers are leaving the profession in droves. This is leaving the teaching profession with no suitable replacements to be found and increasingly fewer people entering teacher training programs. It is possible for school districts to diminish the proverbial “bleeding of teachers” if they stop creating an atmosphere of failure, and equip teachers for a real future.
The change that is required is in how the teachers are trained. It is improbable that colleges can be expected to fully develop and train teachers to teach the modern scholar.
That is why the focus of this call to action is to change professional development. The Foundation of this is rooted in Gulamhussein’s Five Principles of Effective Professional Development and they are as follows:
“The duration of professional development must be significant and ongoing to allow time for teachers to learn a new strategy and grapple with the implementation problem.
There must be support for a teacher during the implementation stage that addresses the specific challenges of changing classroom practice.
Teachers’ initial exposure to a concept should not be passive, but rather should engage teachers through varied approaches so they can participate actively in making sense of a new practice.
Modeling has been found to be highly effective in helping teachers understand a new practice
The content presented to teachers shouldn’t be generic, but instead specific to the discipline (for middle school and high school teachers) or grade-level (for elementary school teachers) (Gulamhussein, 2013).
Using these principles, I am proposing the following changes. All generic workshops would immediately be replaced with content-specific, single goal oriented development that would last a year. This is based largely on my personal experience with ineffective leadership in the public school system and my coursework in my master’s program. I have learned a new, more successful way for training and desire to help make a change for the better.
How I Designed the Change Agents
Using my personal experience and my fascination with technology, I have been using programs such as SquareSpace, Final Cut, Adobe Suite, and sometimes Canva to design parts to the program. The programs are a means to an end to These programs serve to communicate in words and visuals; moreover, they communicate my personal growth. Some would think learning these platforms and programs are unnecessary, but through my education of them, they have improved the quality of my instruction. This is the growth mindset I want to pass on to everyone else.
Sources
Duarte, N. (2013). Resonate: Present visual stories that transform audiences. John Wiley & Sons.
Gulamhussein, A. (2013). Teaching the teachers: Effective professional development in an era of high stakes accountability. The Center for Public Education.
Here Is What Should Change