Earlier this week, I worked with members of my school leadership team to plan the initial inservice days of school.  Now, inservice has a connotation for teachers that is mostly unpleasant.  As we flood into school those first days, the complaints abound, as we discuss our summers, about how we would rather be in our classrooms.  I only complain a little less than most, not because I am passionate about the plans that have been made for me for those initial days but mostly because I have zero interest in “spending time in my room”, alone.   The administration plans something for us to learn and we generally sit through hours of new information that is not presented in a particularly engaging way.  Hmmm, sounds kind of like what the kids complain about.  We are the worst students on these first days.  I sometimes wonder if it is supposed to remind us not to torture our students.  When I mention this to teachers, they usually act as if I’m kidding.  I’m not really but I do find it amusing that teachers make such horrible students.

During the two days I spent with teacher leaders doing just what administrators usually do, I realized not only how difficult it is to provide something meaningful to everyone but also that maybe, like students, we don’t always know what we don’t know.  In order to learn, we must be uncomfortable and do things we don’t want to do.  I know many want to organize their rooms but is this the most valuable or important thing to be doing? I don’t know the answer but I know that during one discussion about a new initiative, we had different views about how much and the type of support that teachers would need in order to implement the initiative successfully.  So, how do we figure out who is right? How do we address the needs of everyone? Is it possible? Teachers are expected to do it for students (although I wonder how successful we are much of the time)?

I do feel like there should be some balance.  I think that teachers need to accept that there are some reasons that we need to do things together.  We should be communicating a common vision for learning in our buildings.  We should have common expectations for behavior, climate, and classroom management.  While these pieces of information could be communicated through email, there is sometimes a need for us to have consensus on these issues in order for them to be implemented with fidelity.  What we don’t need is group trainings on things that are better left to the individual or cannot be implemented in a way that participants are engaged.  This is a waste of time and money for all.  Just as we encourage teachers not to lecture for a solid hour, these types of instruction should not be modeled at inservice.  I once had a training on how to engage kids using the Ipad where I didn’t use my Ipad once in 3 hours.  Really? Another time, I spent an entire day listening to someone tell me how to use about a hundred drop down menus available in the special education database we use. I could have easily learned to use these on my own and written three IEP’s in that time period.

I question the idea of inservice altogether just like I question how we have compartmentalized school for students.  As our leadership team struggled to decide on professional development needs, I think we came up with something in the middle, but as my co-teacher reflected about me at the end of those meetings, I am always looking for something better.  My vision for inservice would be to do away with the current set up.  Imagine that it doesn’t have to look anything like it currently does.  I imagine each teacher identifying a learning interest; an idea, a strategy or a tool that intrigues them and makes them curious.  Each teacher would then identify how to learn about that interest; a book, action research, a unit, a collaboration or development of a product. Once they had implemented the learning task, they could share what they had learned.  All of this would be transparent somehow so the principal as well as other teachers could  see what each teacher was learning.  Teachers could then identify other ideas they might want to explore and they could collaborate on projects as they came up.  Somehow there would be an authentic way to document what was being done.  I wonder if it could even be available to parents and community members as well?

As I said, there are reasons that faculty need to get together but the reality is that, most of the time, there are a select few who need to be involved in trainings and the rest are just being plugged in somewhere because they have to “be doing something”.  Professional development should be ongoing, authentic and should be in the classroom. Teachers are frequently taken out of the classroom to do professional development.  Schools  need to rethink how they use time.  Is there a more flexible way? Despite all the complaining teachers do about inservice, my way is way more work.  But more engaging.  We should be implementing all that we learn about instruction and learning with teachers as well as students.  Just like the Ipad training I had, our inservice protocol is counter to all we know about how people learn.  Every year I see the irony.  I imagine I will see it again on Tuesday.  We are on the right track though in changing and I know there are other change agents out there who see the irony.

I set out on an individual professional development path this summer and found that I actually learned quite a bit and was able to manage my time well.  I started with one learning task but I learned so much that it sparked other things.  I will be elaborating on my own experience next week.  What are you doing on your own? What are other administrators starting to do differently? Please share how you are moving away from traditional professional development and inservice models?