Clint Eastwood and the Road to Individualized Professional Development.

At Genoa Middle School, staff meetings look a little different this year. Principal Mike Hinze and Assistant Principal Chris Poynter are redefining professional development for teachers. The goal? To address the disconnect between how we best learn and how pd sessions are conducted. In most measures of teacher quality, the ability to differentiate and individualize learning are a major focus for evaluation, yet most teachers attend pd sessions that are presented in a one size fits all approach. We hope to document the journey that Genoa is making to a new style of professional development through this blog.

Initial Steps: 

Redefining pd takes some brainstorming to wrap one's mind around. As with any major shift in curriculum and teaching style, thought needs to be put into the process so that resources can be gathered and roadblocks can be anticipated. Genoa's first step was to lay out the structure that would be followed to individualize teacher development. Since all teachers are required to go through the OTES process, the goal setting piece of teacher evaluation would be used to generate goals for individualized pd as well. To serve as a check on progress, there would be some sort of deliverable or progress check at specific intervals during a pd cycle. Teachers would also be responsible for tracking their time and progress and reporting out at these progress checks. At the end of the cycle, share outs would take place to ensure that all staff members benefit from the learning that each teacher is doing.  Time frames for these sessions and more details will be developed as the cycles are proposed and developed by teachers. Possible topics were brainstormed and a library of resources for possible topics was begun using existing pd courses in Schoology, book studies, websites, and through leveraging district departments that are responsible for the areas that these topics might cover.

Involving Staff: 
The next step in the individualized pd process was to involve teachers, get feedback, and wipe the pd slate clean. A staff meeting was held where building culture around pd was discussed. Very quickly it became evident that staff members wanted more voice and choice in the content of pd sessions.  An activity where staff identified The Good, the Bad and, and the Ugly, was conducted and results were tabulated. Good pd (worthwhile and relevant) was identified as well as bad (not great, but salvageable) and ugly (stay far far away from this).

See? Clint Eastwood made an appearance!

Interestingly, there was mixed feedback about many of the pd sessions of past years. The most common items in all three categories were very similar. This pointed to the need for pd to be individualized so that, according to Chris Poynter, "teachers can grow exactly where they need, and have interest, in a way that best benefits teaching and learning for the students of Genoa Middle School"

The next staff meeting reviewed the feedback from the Clint Eastwood Exercise

 and formulated the next steps in the process: The Expectation

The Expectation: 

Teachers have been asked to choose a topic that is needed and interesting that pertains to their classroom practice. They will generate a challenging, attainable, and measurable goal for their growth.  From here, they will develop a learning plan as well decide how to demonstrate the impact on students. The goal is to complete this by the end of this school year in order to hit the ground running next year. Teachers used a forum to submit topic ideas for PD and talk about the different possibilities that these offered. 

The forum generated an expansive list of options as well as strong rationales as the the value of these topics including Social Emotional Learning, Technology, models of teaching like stations, PBL,  or centers, writing, and student culture. Teachers can form groups or work individually to find the topics that are most important to them and their teaching. 

Future Steps: 

Staff members will be developing their plans through the rest of this year and begin implementing them next year. The successes and difficulties of this process will be an important part of demonstrating the value of the different proposals and how they align with teacher's goals for their professional growth.  Stay tuned for more information on the development of the requirements for deliverables, how reflections and feedback will be incorporated, and other details!