LBS 850 Module 9- Teaching Teachers

This week, our task was to create some professional development for teachers. I was excited for this project, as I believe it will be really useful to implement in real time when I'm back in school. This is a technology class, so I struggled with whether I had to be making up professional development that taught a form of technology or if I could teach any topic as long as I used technology. I finally settled on teaching technology because it felt like the biggest stretch for me and I want to get as much as possible out of this class. I'm proud of myself because I really wanted to do a webpage dedicated to helping teachers find diverse books and use tech tools embedded to leave mini-reviews and network about which lessons and standards they were able to meet with each. I'll tuck that idea away for another time.

We talked a ton on the discussion boards this week about how useless a lot of PD is, and I've heard this from numerous sources during my 10 years as a teacher. I'm really proud of how my district has been moving away from pointless PD- a teacher-led committee solicits ideas and sets up mini workshops for staff to choose from at the beginning of every year, but through out the year the building principal usually has the final say on individual days of PD. In general, if you can prove that what you're doing is standards-based and building professional knowledge, we're given a lot of space to make the best choices for our personal practice. I know that's not the case everywhere, so I feel really lucky.

I think, in my actual real-life practice, my best bet is going to be things I can explain via screencast and/or protocol document and then leave up on a website for teachers to access on their own time. I'll also continue to make myself available for one-on-one time helping teachers, if anyone ever has enough time to take me up on it. Meet them where they're at and give them what they need!