As a school leader, you work hard every day to ensure the safety and well-being of your students. You spend countless hours thinking about the students whose situations trouble you the most; Endless afternoons wondering about whether you are making the impact you longed for when you started out on this journey; and more free time than you can count brainstorming about how to lead your hard working teachers in their work with students. You know the stakes. They are high, but they are important to you. And when it comes to planning and implementing professional development in your school, you have a responsibility as the school leader to develop engaging professional development opportunities for your faculty.
Planning and developing professional development in your schools might seem like a never-ending battle, or a no-win situation. You want to impact your faculty in a meaningful way, but teachers often approach professional development with skepticism - How is this helping me in my work with students?
A profession under fire
Today's faculty meetings and professional development have changed over time. The biggest shift in how we approached professional development came barreling into our schools around the time of No Child Left Behind. Prior to that, it was much more common for schools to have a workshop day or two per year, a bi-weekly faculty meeting to hammer out building logistics, and a revolving door of conferences and workshops that teachers could select. These offsite self-selected PD opportunities started to disappear as schools came under increased scrutiny to show student growth and achievement.
Seemingly overnight professional development wasn't really about professional development any more. It became more like "teacher development" as teachers were taking on an increasing amount of blame for the way students were performing globally. This paradigm shift had an enormous impact on you as the school principal as well. Teacher evaluation and monitoring became more intensive; soaking up your time and energy, and jeopardizing true relationship building with teachers. It also impacted the way you were able to use your time doing the things you knew to be true about running a school, in favor of focusing on achievement as test scores, and AYP.
The Dark Days of Professional Development
Every person in your building, from you the principal all the way to your student body, every person in your school building felt the effects of these dark days of professional development. As a leader you would hear about how there was more to do, more improvement to be made, more that can be done. And as the work piled on you would see your teachers become more skeptical, more disengaged. You would listen to them grumble and complain about "another PD," and even though you want to tell them you feel it too, you understand, and you get it - you find it easier to remain neutral. After all, there are responsibilities expected of you as well.
Schools are still living in the aftermath of these days. Some districts are still pushing highly intensive professional development agendas in an attempt to appease school boards and stakeholders. Much of that professional development remains just outside of what a majority of teachers find useful and informative with their practice with students. Much of it could be revamped into online course platforms and other self-paced (but still mandatory) modalities.
The discomfort of the professional development aspect of your job as a school leader is impacting you and your energy level to do this job. IF you don't believe me, allow yourself to imagine for just a minute about what it might feel like to experience the happy buzz of a room full of engaged teachers; teachers who are energized, and stoked about how they are growing professionally, and how they are making positive impacts on kids. Imagine your student attendance rate skyrocketing because kids can't wait to come to school to hear what else their passionate teacher has to say.
Reenergizing school professional development starts with you, and it starts with trust
It is time to upgrade professional development at your school. Your professional development should inspire teachers, not leave them wishing they had spent their time doing something else. Today's professional development needs to mirror more of what we expect teachers to do in their classrooms - rich with personal voice and choice. Professional development needs to take a turn in the differentiation department. Professional development that is personally relevant, and differentiated for individual development will help to stoke your teacher's passion for this craft that they love. Teachers with burning passion teach better. They demonstrate higher engagement, less burnout, higher attendance rates, and more energy (and willingness) to volunteer outside of school hours.
Additionally, teachers who are given time and freedom to propose their own individual professional development plans meet their goals and the goals of their schools more frequently. They also have a tendency to teach with more empathy and student attendance rates increase. A recent review of the literature by Johnson (2019) found that when you nurture teacher strengths and allow them to continue discovering their passions, they will constantly find themselves reinforcing their purpose for doing this work. What is interesting about that idea is that you will no longer have to fight the battle of explaining the purpose of why you are doing what you are doing. Fuel the passion fire hot enough and the fire will begin to feed itself. And, since student achievement is always at the forefront of the decisions we make, the Johnson (2019) literature review also noted that parents want teachers who they feel promote student satisfaction more than those that are "only regarded as able to increase test scores."
Next Steps
Personalize the professional development in your school. While I realize there may be district goals and initiatives you need to keep in mind, get curious. You can follow this plan to get started:
1. Conduct a SWOT analysis of your building. Really look for the areas that need the most transformation and determine of those things can be covered in a new way: such as a flipped faculty meeting or using the "Standing Room Only" meeting method. If you are unsure about how to conduct a SWOT analysis, you can access this resource to get you started, or you can hire someone to come in and walk you through the process. There are in-person and online consulting opportunities for conducting SWOT analysis that will yield the results you are looking for. There is also an interactive blog post that I call a PDFlip you can find here that walks you through how to do a SWOT for an issue you are facing in your school. As always, you can email me. I'm happy to set up a 30 minute clarity call to help you understand the process, your results, and design next steps.
2. Survey your teachers and ask them what the need. Once you have completed your SWOT analysis and identify the areas that you find the most concerning for your school, spend some time surveying your teachers on what their needs, desires, and passions are. You may find that some of the items from the SWOT align with their needs. Don't lose sight of the fact that you teachers are the most prominent factor in student achievement and they have been highly trained to do this work. Trust them.
3. Be Brave. Look at your current professional development plan/calendar and reorganize the items. Your goal here is to increase the amount of built-in PD time that teachers could engage in self-study professional development. As you reorganize your plan, be sure to consider any district initiatives that need time devoted to them. Look for items that could be flipped, or delivered in a different way. Then, support your teachers in creating a self-study that they are stoked about. It's OK to require certain elements - for example, aligning their study with the vision and mission of the school, or their content expertise. You can use this template to facilitate self-study plan development with teachers.
Empowered professional development starts with you. Are you up for the challenge?
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