Your post is thoughtful, reasoned, and common-sensical. It is clear that you are committed to being a lead learner in your class and among your peers, and I applaud your willingness to be open as well as reflective about your practice. As your context appears to be the same as mine (Ontario) I would add a couple of thoughts about what you propose and a reflection on your overall theme.

As a principal, I would love nothing more than to free up time on PD days to enable teachers to work collaborate, share, and build their own passion projects. However, I am very limited by both the mandates of the Ministry (who script almost minute for minute what must be covered and accounted for in a typical PD day) and the articles of the collective agreements (PD, for example, can never be part of a staff meeting). This means that I have to find creative ways to build in release time for teachers, which is particularly challenging (or alternately expensive) in smaller schools.

There are also some challenges around evidence and data that need to be acknowledged and explored. When we try and improve environments and culture it is often hard (or even possible) to measure change. Forcing accountability (in terms of data/evidence) in these areas sometimes stifles creativity and experimentation. To be honest, as a lead learner in my building, I would be much more happy and excited to have teachers take risks and have no visible gains to achievement to show for it. In essence, I want to see my teachers fail and reflect and learn (just like we want our students to have the confidence and resilience to do) and know that everything will be OK. Learning isn’t about constant, uninterrupted improvement and achievement — it is a journey with dead ends and switch-backs and false trails, as well as baby steps and leaps and bounds!

I would further suggest that you can have all of the wonderful habits, structures, plans, and resources in place and you still won’t be able to grow or change if you don’t have strong relationships. Relationship with others, collaboration, and community is the foundation of our work, and as I often say “We don’t teach subjects, we teach people.” This sometimes gets lost in all that we are asked to do.

I don’t articulate this as an excuse not to be more flexible and innovative in design and practice — far from it. I believe that what you suggest is an imperative for the education system, and something that we must tackle. The question for me is: Should we wait for the system to change to support a new model, or should we hack/alter these structures to make them work for us? I can only speak for my own experience, and that is finding ways to make PD work and be contextually appropriate for my staff.

I save my spare time to consider and write about how I would redesign the systems!