Leading Quality Professional Development for Teachers

Leading quality professional development sessions for teachers is essential to their growth. When teacher leaders provide impactful learning opportunities, educators perform stronger in the classroom. This allows students to be lead by a more proficient teacher which in turn allows students to achieve at higher rates.

In the past, professional development sessions have been “sit and get,” meaning teachers sit and receive learning. This passive formula diminishes the success rate of teaching applying their new learning in their classroom. Teachers need to learn best practices in addition to planning and practicing what those will look like in their classroom.

This post will walk you through five aspects of providing quality professional learning sessions for teachers.

Learn It

Instead of providing lengthy, rarely applicable, “sit and get” meetings for teachers, learn how to lead an efficient and engaging experience. The old, out-dated professional development session is an ineffective way to equip teachers with instructional best practices and current pedagogy knowledge. Take time to research best practices in sharing learning so that you can:

• Equip teacher leaders with efficient and effective professional development planning strategies
• Plan, prepare and execute an efficient and engaging professional development session

Create a Plan for Leading Efficient & Engaging Professional Development Sessions by learning all the necessary pieces that make an effective learning experience.

Plan It

Once you know how you want to present the new learning to teachers, it’s time to create a Professional Development Calendar & Planning Guide. Take the time to map out an entire year of meaningful & engaging professional development for your colleagues. Be sure to thoroughly plan, thinking through session topics, descriptions, purpose, and logistical details. A calendar will keep you on track to meet your goals in improving teacher proficiency. Teachers will appreciate knowing what learning opportunities are coming and when. This will build excitement throughout the year!

Track It

Teachers should track their learning. This information can be submitted during a performance evaluation as evidence of continual learning. By providing a Professional Development Log , teachers can keep track of all the professional development sessions that they attend. It should include the date, session title and a quick summary of learning. Including additional pages for detailed notes taken during the professional development session would be helpful.

Deliver It

Give teachers a choice in what and how they learn. Create a Professional Development Choice Board offering a variety of choices in learning opportunities. Voice and choice are two characteristics of building teacher autonomy that have a positive impact on school culture. These options could be micro learning sessions teachers could complete on their own. For example, you might record short videos on topics or provide researched resources for teachers to use and implement.

Perfect It

Once you provide professional development sessions to teachers, ask for feedback. Send out a Professional Development Feedback Survey. Their responses will allow you to provide more personalized, effective learning sessions in the future. Teachers will appreciate you asking for their input and you will appreciate their ideas for making the learning sessions more applicable and valuable to them.

Grab all of the resources mentioned in this post here to help you lead quality professional development sessions for teachers.

GO BE GREAT!

 

 

 

What is your biggest obstacle leading professional development?