geek.teacher

Thinking ahead to an upcoming project* on this one. Enjoy some Star Wars.

*ooh! Mystery!

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Register today for the Massachusetts Teachers Association Unconference. It’s part of the annual Summer Conference in Williamstown. Full issue of MTA Today here.

I’m pretty excited to announce that I’m going to have two photographs hanging in an art show this coming weekend! From 1-7Pm on Sunday, April 22, you’ll be able to see the two pieces below hanging at the Arlington Center for the Arts for the duration of the A-Town Jazz’n Art Festival.

Arlington Town Night, 2011

Digital Citizens, 2012

Question in my email inbox about PD following the Edcamp model: What if people just goof off?

My response:

The goofing off question occurs most frequently when people are thinking about bringing Edcamp-style PD to their own districts. My colleagues on the Edcamp Foundation presented at ASCD last weekend and got that question there, too. It’s kind of a cute question, really, and is frequently asked in such a way that implies it’s something we hadn’t thought about before.

I would pretty much guarantee that anybody who’s going to goof off during professional development that follows the Edcamp format is also going to goof off during traditional professional development opportunities. We’ve all seen them. They’re most likely sitting in the back of the room, making snide remarks to their neighbors, paying as little attention as possible to what’s actually going on. If we’re lucky, they’re not paying attention because they’re doing something work-related like grading.

At the same time, though, traditional sit and git PD isn’t just losing the people who would never pay attention. It’s losing whole swathes of teachers that care and actively want to improve. Unfortunately, the way it’s presented also frequently forces those teachers to check out, because the material is being presented in the most mind-numbing fashion possible.

Our professional development should both implicitly and explicitly model the educational experiences we want our students to have. If we say we should differentiate instruction for our students and provide them with a wide variety of educational opportunities, why aren’t we doing the same for our teachers? I for one am sick and tired of professional development aimed at the lowest common denominator. My previous district in Pennsylvania gave laptops to all of the teachers and then had mandatory laptop training. It’s a good thing I left the district before I had to go through that, because I would have flipped out.

Even after a decade in education, I know I still have a lot of room to grow as a teacher. The unfortunate reality, though, is that most of the state- or district-provided professional development has been woefully inadequate at actually helping me to improve my practice. I know better than most what I need to work on and the things I need to learn about. I don’t think it’s too much to demand opportunities for the kind of professional development that will actually lead to that.

So to circle back to the original question: If you’re really worried that, given the opportunity to choose their own learning opportunities, teachers will actively choose to goof off or leave the building, I’m really worried about the lack of trust you have in your teachers and the professional climate of your school or district. Trust your professional educators to act like professionals, and treat them as such.