Teacher in Development

I’ve been learning a great deal about harnessing the power of FLOW, Passion, and Addictive experiences, mainly in the context of the ESL classroom and with my students. But this week I’ve been forced to consider how to apply those same principles in the Professional Development program where I work.

No FLOW, No Passion, No Addiction = No learning
I’m in charge of our company’s PD program, and am often the one tasked with facilitating each session. I was reflecting on our first sessions which were held in August, and was just not happy with how they turned out. They were flat. Directionless. And sometimes just plain boring. I’m not sure I really did a good job…at least that’s how I felt a few days after the event. I’m sure very little was picked up by our participants.

I began asking myself, what could I do differently? Our opening sessions in August were far from addictive learning experiences, far from FLOW, and likely not that effective as a result. How could I begin applying what I was learning for my classrooms, to what I’m doing with our team of twenty teachers?

Some realizations:
1. Working with teachers is a whole different mental ballgame.
I’ve partnered with students of all ages and positions, from children to company presidents, and have rarely felt intimidated by them. Working with my peers, my collegues, has been an entirely different matter for me. I’ve been very intimidated by them. Why? I don’t know yet. I’ll have to continue thinking that one through.

2. I made a deadly asumption: Teachers are already turned on and passionate about teaching and learning how to be better teachers. This little asumption is what shot me in the foot. Because I was already thinking our team of teachers would be pre-stoked and rearing to charge into our training material for August, I neglected to take the time to stoke, and fan, and employ the ideas I’ve been reading so much about lately around addictive classroom experiences. Big mistake. I thought, wrongly of course, that since they were teachers they would already be turned on by professional development….that maybe all the work in that area has already been taken care of?

Big realization: Teachers need to be “turned on” to developing their skills just as much as students need to be “turned on” to developing their language skills. In some cases, teachers could be easier to stimulate, but in the end, as I realized the painful way, you have to take the time to light those fires, engage, create and sustain FLOW.

I’ve been following Kathy Sierra’s blog Creating Passionate Users around now for a good three or four months. The site is….incredible. I love it. Here are a few posts that have particularily begun shaping the way I live and move in the classroom.

1. Kicking Ass is more fun : What are you helping your students LEARN? The better your students become at something, the more their passion for that something grows. Before reading this article, and I’m trying to track down another one where she brilliantly shows how learning is addictive in itself, I never stopped to think that when I take the time to help students really learn something well, I am actually building passion in them to grow for more.

1.2 Upgrade your users, not just your product: What should you be “selling” in the classroom? The next grammar point? Or how you can talk non-stop about your previous work experiences at your next “English only” job interview?

2. What can software learn from kung fu?: This post just made my head spin. How to create “sucked-in” user experiences. There are so many really good points around this post…but I drew a major…new way of working from it. I wanted our teachers to be aware of what exactly our training course was doing, and where it was going. We’re preparing to take the Cambridge Teaching Knowledge Test together. So instead of just handing out a copy of the course book to everyone, I also built a “Learning Map” - borrowing from Sierra’s “levels’ approach. When students or course participants know where they are, and what they have to do to move forward and gain “the next superpower” - in this case certification, passion and motivation shoots up.

I found this to be true. Last Friday we had our first PD session for September. The first thing I did was hand out a copy of the “Learning Map” I had built. Together we went over it, explaining what each “level” required of everyone, and how we could move along to reach certification at each end of module.

It was quite interesting to see how everyone seemed to get interested in the idea of certification. There were lots of head nodding and “Ahhh, now that’s neat, interesting, and cools” going around the room as we talked about it. Interest was happening! *Big difference from August’s first sessions let me tell ya!

I will be posting more to this category, because right now I have to leave. But I am excited about what I have learned from Sierra, and that I also need to apply all this to working with teachers too. Maybe a “Duh” realization for some…but for me, it marked a great change in how I work with our teachers.