Teacher in Development

Inspired by Graham Wegner’s post…and his question about “Is self directed PD possible…

Professional Development: Is it about hooking up your people to a tasty looking firehose? Is it about guiding them through on a journey of learning where you or your curriculum know what’s best for their brains and your job is to fill them full?

What is, afterall, the purpose of professional development? Is it an automated, repeatable cookie-cutter process that produces the same results in and on the people subjected to it? Is it a well-oiled machine that sucks in, adds on, then spits out?

I think traditionally, yes. Aren’t schools and teacher trainers looking for cookies, where cookies are teachers and their classrooms that look and act the same? That’s what we want right….that when we go to one teacher’s lit room we see adherence. We see the same thing happening across the board where all of our teachers do the same thing when teaching a certain subject.

We look for it over here in the ESL classroom too. We want our students learning about the simple present tense in the same way, following the same method. We don’t care if it doesn’t fit you, or your students. We know this method works, and we want you to do it. Professional Development is blasting
yourself with the firehose before you turn it on your students.

Or should professional development be chaos - where chaos is perhaps in the eyes of the beholder read: trainer, school etc.

What if what I want and need to learn about is not on the training agenda? Is that professional development for me? Or is professional development about me being interested in something that I need for my classes - that’s really relevant and timely for what I’m doing and experiencing?

Professional Development informed by chaos is where the curriculum is the person, to borrow from Wesley Fryer. PD is no longer a firehose, but a trajectory coach. Normally it’s at your side, not in front of you leading. It can take that position if you want it to, but more than anything it suggests directions, but always as a copilot. It’s onboard, going where you, the teacher, is going. It should be the picture of personal adaptation, where one person’s PD experience my vary totally from another’s.

It’s not a unisex setup, where one size and style fits everyone. Yes, there are times I think where this sort of approach is needed, but only to establish a base or foundation.

In my own case I have begun to approach the chaos. Our company is asking all of our teachers to take the Cambridge University Teaching Knowledge Test (TKT). The reason: We want everyone on our staff to have a basic foundation to work with.

This year we’re breaking from what we’ve always done, PD sessions around each unit of the TKT course book. Instead we’re throwing the sessions out to our teachers. They decide what they want to work on. They decide when they want to work on it. They decide the topic and the questions they want answered.

If there is no topic of interest, there is no official PD session. I see my role as a servant. To be there when needed, wanted, and asked for. Our company has given a direction to move in in that everyone of our teachers must have TKT certification by the end of 2006. How each person arrives at this destination is up to them.

Our PD strategy in the future: I see communities of practice forming and disolving around teacher interests. Perhaps fueled by what was learned in the TKT, or via other sources. What spawns it is not nearly as important to me as that it happens.

PD should not be DONE TO ME, but DONE BY ME. Not because I have to, but because I want to.

I see my role as teacher trainer as being a trajectory coach. I need to get interested in what our teachers are interested in and see how best I can fan that into greater flame. What related nodes can I connect them to? How can I encourage greater curiosity? How can I build community where what they know has the opportunity to be passed on to others?

Sometimes I see myself strongly suggesting a certain direction, but this happens sometimes. Most of the time I should be there to serve and personalize.