While reading twitter, @dougpete mentioned an article from the
National Post by Tristin Hopper called “Is the PD Day Broken?
Professional Development Days May Do Little to Improve Teaching.” It
talks about Bill Whelan’s (a Medical Physicist at the University of
P.E.I.) recommendation as co-chair of a one year commission tasked with
modernizing P.E.I.’s school system. His prominent call was for PD
reform! He told the P.E.I. Ministry of Education to have a “long, hard
look at PD, or ‘professional development,’ days.” Hopper’s article,
continues to share what he learned about PD in B.C., Ontario, Alberta,
Saskatchewan & the Yukon, all comments suggested that many
teachers/administrators are unhappy with PD days provided in their
province.
Whelan did look at a report from a team of Stanford researchers at
education systems in Singapore and Finland, two countries that rank at
the top of the charts in student aptitude. He found that a lot more time
was spent away from the classroom than North American teachers.
Teachers in Helsinki spend 40% of their time “analyzing lessons, meeting
with students and going over new teaching methods.” Stanford’s
recommendation for the U.S. was that schools needed a massive surge of
resources into PD. Whelan’s final recommendation for P.E.I. PD for
teachers was to build: ‘at-the-elbow’ coaching, weekly collaboration
meetings and to allow for teachers to watch a more experienced colleague
at work.
This leads me to the project that my colleague and I are working on
with the Ontario Ministry of Education. It’s the ‘Teacher Learning and
Leadership Program” (TLLP) and it is an annual project-based
professional learning opportunity for experienced classroom teachers. In
the fall of 2010, we wrote a proposal centred around “inquiry-based
learning and teaching with technology,” that the Ministry approved and
we began in the spring of 2011.
Our TLLP project has been the “Best Job-Embedded Professional
Development” that any teacher could ever dream of. We built our own
budget around the costs of reaching our project goals, including time
for research, time for planning, and going over new teaching methods.
The TLLP recognized our experience and professionalism, thus providing
us with the resource to help us solve problems that were particular to
our classroom; student engagement and motivation! It’s PD that is
opposite to “One size fits ALL.”
Teacher PD
It’s ironic that our project is about student driven, “inquiry-based
learning” since the TLLP has allowed us as teachers, to be inquiry
learners…that is teacher driven not board/district driven. Our project
included a budget that would cover supply teachers for anyone
interested in visiting our classroom, “a classroom in action”
(http://www.inquiry-based.com). The response from teachers visiting our
personally developed PD is “the best PD I’ve ever attended.” It has
been very rewarding for us, for visiting teachers, administrators and
for our students. Our learning and effective practices have allowed our
students to grow and learn in an “inquiry-based classroom” that have
exceeded our expectations. Students are now, excited about coming to
school and they are enthusiastic about learning.
Would this shift from a traditional style of teaching to an inquiry
style of teaching, have happened for us with a PD day at the school
board/district level? Probably not! How do you engage in PD in your
board/district? Could Canadian boards/districts model the Helsinki
format for PD? I would love to hear how you meet personal PD, how your
board/district provides PD and what you think would be the best way to
offer Canadian teachers with PD that would make sure quality and
effective practices are in place for our students to place at the top of
the achievement charts.
Yours in Education,
Louise
