Ongoing professional development reflects best educational practices

Ongoing professional development reflects best educational practices

Explain:

The 9^th characteristic of an effective middle school is that “ongoing professional development reflects best educational practices” (This We Believe, pg 30). For all those teachers out there, professional development is a pretty easy concept to understand, however for it to be effective it needs to be more than just a day away from your students. Effective professional development needs not be a series of random activities, but needs to be linked to the teacher or the schools specific needs. Additionally materials learned at professional development sessions need realistic plans of implementation and sustainability in the classroom or school. This is best achieved through multi-phased workshops, workshops that educate teacher teams as a whole, and workshops that have some form of assessment or evaluation.

Describe:

This past year I went to many informational and interesting professional development workshops, however after most of them I returned to my classroom doing the same things I was doing before. I workshop I attended however forced me to make critical changes in my planning and lessons and so I would like to bring one to the forefront of peoples attention. The workshop was held by NYC DOE District 75 which offers professional development workshops specifically for teachers of students in special education. The link to the workshop (held last year) can be found here: http://www.district75pd.org/classviewer.php?cid=2131 although it will likely be held again in the future. The workshop was to teach students Joint Action Routines.

 *For further information on what a Joint Action Routine is, please refer to this website:  http://www.bbbautism.com/pdf/article_19_communiation_joint_action_routines.pdf

There were two professional development days however the first was instructional and the second was reflective. In between those two days, we were expected to implement joint action routines with our students, have them practice repeatedly, and then one of the instructors from the PD attended a class period and filmed my students undergo the Joint Action Routine. During the second day of the professional development we watched videos of each teachers class to see the multiple ways in which the JAR could be implemented and to receive feedback on how we had already done it. We then developed plans to modify the JAR we had used or to develop additional ones for the future.

Analyze:

This Joint Action Routine professional development was so successful because there was ongoing assessment of the teachers to see if they could successfully apply what they had learned. Rather than being passive learners they were forced to implement the techniques used by having their class do a JAR and by evaluating other teachers implementations. Watching all the other videos was a bit long and tedious at the time however retrospectively I can see the benefits. The JAR in which I implemented was targeted specifically at my class of students, however throughout my career I may also work with lower and higher functioning students, or with larger or smaller classes, or a may teach different subjects. By having the opportunity to watch others work I know have a very broad understanding of how to implement a JAR in all kinds of classroom environments.

Apply:

I think there is much to be applied from this example of professional development. First of all it is a reminder that we are more similar to our students than we often remember. We learn best when the topic is integrated and relevant in our life, when our work is assessed, when we are forced to reflect on our work and when our work is supported by others. Additionally, after attending this professional development, in the future I plan to search for an increasing number of professional development opportunities that are multi-phased workshops, or that involve me going with my paraprofessionals, related service providers or teams of teachers. Having multiple staff members from a school attend the meeting, increases accountability to implement what has been learned.