Ideas on Expanding Professional Development When Time is Tight

Last night I just got back from Brazil after attending the 2022 AMISA educator's conference. This was my first educational conference in 3 years after a one year sabbatical and teaching the year after in lockdown in which most teachers around the world were barely hanging on. Many by a thread. 

Image Courtesy of Sylvia Duckworth

Some of my big 'Take Aways' from the conference were: 

• Levels of Engagement Board: Asking students to rate their levels of engagement to allow for self reflection rather than a classroom 'rules' board. (see above) 
• Reiterating the Importance of Practice Tests: Many teachers still haven't grasped the notion that students deliberately fail a test to get the information for the retest. The important of 'practice tests' has been supported by research for 40 years. 
• DEIJ Work with Dr. Derrick Gay: This was my first time working with Dr. Gay and his rapport and professionalism were an inspiration. 
• We Spend 40% Teaching What Kids Know: We must make better use of pre-assessments, and non-linear curriculum to meet a varied group of learners to ensure that they don't get bored or are pushed too hard, too quick. 
• Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus: Fun website that is completely fake and is great for assessing credibility of news sites. 
• Tello Drones: These small drones were out in display and the students did some competitive racing. 
• Teach to Transfer: Teaching content that allows students to laterally apply such learning in different domains. 

Tello Drones

Other than the great keynotes, speakers series and workshops, one of my favorite things was to mix and mingle with other administrators in the region. As a new comer to South America, I asked many of these new found colleagues, "How are you finding time for professional development for your faculty?" 

"Within the smallest constraints, you can still find freedom"

Coming from Asia, the students there were always dismissed at 3:00 and staff were kept on campus until 4:00 four days a week for PD and one day a week was an extended work afternoon until 4:45. It seems that the norm for many schools in South America is that shortly after the students leave, the staff are free to go as well creating a problem of not having enough time for curriculum work, or committee initiatives. Despite research supporting PD has having a positive influence on collective teacher efficacy, increased feelings of job satisfaction and morale, how do we offer professional development where there is no time in the day? 

Creative Ways of Offering Professional Development When Time is Tight

I had a professor in college that taught me "Within the smallest constraints, you can still find freedom". Ideally, it would be preferred to have more afternoons for this type of work, but for staff whom these early release days have been engrained, expanding the school day by an hour might be received poorly so here are some ideas that we have implemented that have had success: 

Micro-PD

Our school did this in Korea and our director of learning would send out small video vignettes that were less than a minute. For people who don't have a lot of time, this was an effective delivery system. 

Course Catalogue Offerings

We are expanding our course catalogue to offer PBL, UDL and ESL strategies that we are sharing with divisional principals that push out advertisement to their faculty weekly. 

Workshops on Demand

Like our course catalogue, we have expanded our workshops which we have listed in a database for reference and signups by department during department planning time. 

Twitter

With our school hashtag, we were able to share articles on professional learning and also curate these into our principals newsletter. 

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