While sitting at the Board of Ed. meeting tonight, I continued my usual multi-tasking until Mike Casserly took his spot at the big table. It was time for the long awaited report from the Council of Great City Schools. Mike began by commending the district for its improvements in growth, accountability, and systems architecture. He praised the administration, staff and school board for their efforts...
Then, I perked up, and put away my article on transformational dialogues. (by Daniel Kim; by the way it was EXCELLENT!!) CSCS found in its evaluation that...
professional development is fractured, and that teachers don't get much out of professional development. Its implementation is inconsistent between schools and classrooms.
Can you believe it?? DCTA has been saying this for a couple of years, and it has fallen on deaf ears. One of our issues in bargaining and IIC has been the lack of teacher voice in professional development. We have had ongoing conversations about the need to differentiate based on the knowledge and skills of teachers and students. In fact, this is where our School Leadership Teams (found in Article 5-4) proposal came from this year- so that teachers can determine the professional development in their school so that it is relevant to the needs of the school and students. It gets better...
When it got to questions, one board member wanted to know who has the best professional development program. Shocking answer... no one has the best but...
The most successful professional development programs are those that are done in collaboration with the union AND that aren't taken off of the shelf!
I was waiting for the skies to open, and balloons and confetti to drop. WOW! Working with the teachers union makes a difference in implementing effective professional development. Do you think it might impact student learning too??
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2 comments:
Kim, I have to agree with you about the district's professional development except that the real problem lies with it being centrally controlled rather than school based. I don't think a DCTA, district or collaboratively designed program that is managed from central is likely to work for most teachers in the district. There are numerous reports from CDE, think tanks and foundations that outline good PD. Van
That's exactly the point, Van. Centrally mandated PD is not always the most effective. We want schools (teachers and principals) to be able to differentiate PD at their sites based on what their students need. The cookie cutter approach isn't working, and CGCS acknowledged it!
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