How Can We Provide Meaningful PD for Teachers?

By the end of this month, I will be retiring from the Hawaii Department of Education. My career as an educator began when I graduated with my degree and secured a job as a Head Start teacher. 45 years and thousands of students later, I end my formal career as a principal at Daniel K. Inouye Elementary School. It has been a most gratifying career!

Just because I'm retiring doesn't mean that I won't continue to follow education issues and do what I can to make a difference. One issue that I've grappled with deals with professional development for teachers. Back in early May, I shared this blog, "Making Time for Teachers to Learn in PLCs" with my Twitter community along with this question: How does your school do PD? There never seems to be enough time for Ts to collaborate and learn together. We tried PLCs this year? Do you have other ideas about differentiating PD for Ts? Please share!

Denise Murai saw my post, and in typical Denise fashion, she saw this as an opportunity for school leaders to convene to discuss this issue. She created an event, and we came up with two driving questions:

• How does your school create opportunity and time for teachers to learn, collaborate, and share in professional learning communities?
• How can we differentiate PD for teachers?

Yesterday, an intimate group of school leaders met to talk about PD at our schools. I truly believe that sometimes, it helps to start with a smaller group who are invested in the topic. Sharing our successes and our challenges was valuable because one size doesn't fit all. Every school is different, and every school leader is different. What works for one may not work for another principal at another school. However, just listening to other viewpoints and ideas can help us as school leaders to come up with a plan that could work for our teachers. 

I recently read this blog by Katie Martin, "Do We Really Need PD?" Katie explains the difference between "training" and "learning" and states, "If we want to change how students learn, we must change how teachers learn." After all, the goal of professional development should be to not only gain new skills and knowledge but to ensure that student learning is positively impacted.

I believe that we are on the right track at our school in providing an opportunity for teachers to have input in what they want to learn about. Just as we want students to learn from each other, we also want teachers to be able to do the same. The next step is to ensure that these PD PLCs are positively impacting student learning.

Our teachers shared what they learned in the PLC of their choice with their colleagues. 

We need to make time for teachers to share and learn from each other.