ETEC Reflection 12

Professional development is an important aspect for teachers to grow in their skills and knowledge. For evaluation for professional development, these are questions that would stand out to me if I was in the position to organize professional development for a school or school district. The following questions would be critical:

• What are the key skills do teachers need to help student achievement?
• What skills do the teachers feel they need to learn to be better teachers?
• How much time will each skill need for teachers to become proficient?
• Do we need to plan for future follow-up Professional developments to help teachers fine-tune their skill acquisition?
• Can someone in the district train other teachers or do we have to bring in a third party?
• Does the skill function in K-12 or are their specific skills that are needed in different grade levels?

These are the initial questions that cover the initial planning, but there will need to be more planning when determining the needs of the school or school district.

For the integration of technology, leadership should set up a scaffolded learning plan. There needs to be some form of evaluation for teachers to determine their skills with a given technology. This was teachers that do not need the remedial PD then they can work on other skills or knowledge. I have been in a PD where everything was a review, but it was boring and I had to spend a lot of effort to not fall asleep.
It will take more planning and work to scaffold training plans for different proficiency levels but overall it will be worth the effort. Teachers that have higher skill sets will not be bored and feel they are wasting their time. Also, teachers who need remedial training will not have other teachers, who do not need the training, making them feel that they are the only teacher that does not understand the given technology.  

Something that stood out to me as I went through everything was that there is no silver bullet for professional training. With anything in education, there is a statement that I like to refer back to when there is no clear answer “It Depends”. When I thought about planning a PD session there are many variables that one has to consider when planning a PD session. I do not envy those administrators that have to develop PD’s for a whole district.