Professional Development — Drudgery or Delight?

by Priscilla Richardson

You've seen them. You know the ones. They're the teachers who stake out the back row in every professional development meeting, hoping to get some papers graded, some lessons planned, or worse yet, some less-than-quiet conversations started when they tire of listening to the speaker. If these weren't adults, one would almost suspect that a group of seventh graders bent on willful inattention had slipped into the room.

So why has professional development caused teachers to respond to it this way? How can such an innocuous term reduce normally intelligent people to eye rolling and moans, the very student behavior that drives them crazy in their own classrooms? Sometimes inopportune scheduling is the culprit. Other times, professional development is the victim of its own repetitiveness. Unfortunately, much that's touted as "innovative" turns out to be last year's information repackaged with trendy phrases and respun to reflect current issues. And for every such workshop, teachers put another brick in the wall of their resistance to all things labeled "professional development."

Yet without professional development, teachers become walking clichés, doing what they did last year and the year before that. They become the very thing they sometimes scold their students for being — people with closed minds and set ways of doing things. Yet we're either making profound changes or dying slowly, according to Robert Quinn, author of Deep Change: Discovering the Leader Within.

A colleague once told me that she went to as many workshops as possible, and if she was able to take home even one new idea from each one, she considered the time well spent. And this was from a woman with 35 years of experience in the classroom. So what can you, as a beginning teacher or veteran, do to ensure that professional development is profitable to you?

First

Go with an attitude of expectancy. Put away the cynicism that some teachers wear like a second skin, and dare to believe that you will gain something of value. One of the engines that powers teaching is personality, and we all have much to glean from those with personalities and gifts different from our own. And it follows that if you go expecting to learn new things, you will go equipped with notebook and pen to jot down new ideas as you hear them. Not to go prepared to write is to go assuming there will be nothing of value to take away.

Second

Go with a desire to learn new strategies. Whether you’ve been teaching two years or 20, new ways of teaching the old standards are as welcome as rain in the Sahara. Ever catch yourself thinking, I don't think I can teach this lesson one more time? Professional development done well can provide you with a virtual toolbox of ideas that will engage your students and revive your attitude toward teaching that lesson again.

Third

Go to find rejuvenation in the presence of your peers. What can be more refreshing than collectively discovering solutions to common problems, swapping funny or intriguing stories, or discovering that others find an idea of yours positively inspired? Authors Rick Du Four and Becky Burnette note that teachers do not flourish in a climate of detachment or when kept from opportunities to gather new ideas and insights. In a time when accountability is increasingly demanded of the educational community, coming together to compare notes and assess progress toward common goals is vital.

Professional development at its best allows us the opportunity to lift our focus from the little valleys of our individual classrooms to the expansive vista that is education, from the more prosaic tasks of paper grading or lesson planning to the sheer delight and intricate craft of teaching. And anything that helps remind us of why we fell in love with teaching in the first place has to be something we esteem highly — with or without staff development incentive points.

Source: Teachers take charge of their learning: Transforming professional development for student success.

Teacher's Motivations for Professional Growth

• To improve student achievement 73% To improve teaching skills 55% To increase knowledge 34% To meet people who share their professional interests 90% To advance their careers 7% To maintain professional certification 5% To earn more money 5% Other 7%

Source: The National Foundation for the Improvement of Education. Retrieved from (insert link: http://www.nfie.org/publications/takecharge.htm).