TREAT TEACHERS LIKE STUDENTS


I have always said that I appreciate professional development that is well-executed and practical. With that being said, during the first two days of my summer vacation, I attended professional development workshops that focused on backward planning and improving school climate and culture. All presentations were led by the same consulting firm, but each presenter was vastly different.

The first presenter, on the first day, was engaging enough due to her personality, but she was solely “teacher-centered” and did not provide any activities to break up her lecturing, nor did she provide any handouts to accompany the many slides that she read from and referenced during her presentation.

The second presenter was excellent! Since she presented in the morning on the second day, she set the tone for the rest of the day. She began with a fun ice-breaker and implemented (modeled) practices that we could use throughout her entire presentation. She also provided handouts, included videos, and further broke up her presentation with activities for us to do in small groups. She modeled engaging and student-centered instruction.

Finally, there was the last presenter who led the second half of the second day. Although the morning presenter set the tone, there was a clear shift in the afternoon. The last presenter was all over the place and difficult to follow. Her slides were too busy with multiple images and details on each that couldn’t be seen from where we were sitting. With that said, she did not provide handouts for us to follow along, so we were completely lost. She also never engaged us. She remained behind her podium and focused her attention to the images projected on the screen and just read the script.

Here’s my concern: How are you being paid to teach me how to make improvements in my classroom and within our school when you don’t model effective practices throughout your presentation? I’m confused. And this has been the norm for professional development throughout my career. It is my belief that professional development should be conducted as if it were a class of students that we would teach. We need to see lessons modeled. We need to understand how strategies should be implemented. Much like our students, we have a short attention span and need to be engaged. Teachers are already judgmental when it comes to people telling us how to do our jobs, so they need to come correct.

Here are the do’s and don’ts for providing professional development for teachers.

Do:
- provide a clear objective so that we can follow along
- model learning activities
- provide easy to digest slides during the presentation
- include videos to break up the lecture
- bring the audience into the lecture
- include writing activities and group work
- provide handouts
- be mindful of time and pacing

Don’t:
- talk too much
- have poorly designed slideshows with too many graphics, images, or words on one slide
- move through the slides too quickly
- lack focus; jump from one topic to the next without transitions
- give a lot of information without providing hard copies 

These tips can be applied to not only the well-paid consultants that present to us, but fellow faculty members who present to their peers in-house. We retain more information when we are actively involved in the learning process, as opposed to when we are merely spoken to.


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