Redefining Professional Development

Professional development is an interesting concept. When most of us hear it, undoubtedly our minds go straight to an all-day conference with a keynote speaker, breakout sessions, and a hopefully free lunch. Hastily grabbing the official paper on the way out the door so you can log these hours into your licensure system, and ensuring you meet the requirement come license renewal time. I’ve attended quite a few of these conferences, and fortunately, a good majority of them have proven to be useful experiences.

I know, however, that they aren’t always good. In my time as a teacher, I’ve also found that these learning days, while valuable, don’t always have the sustained effect that I would like. I’ll often walk out feeling energized, full of ideas, and renewed in my excitement for this beautiful profession. A few days later, we go back to school and I implement some new strategies, employ some new instructional methods, add a few new titles to my library. Often, I make a few changes to my practice that are for the better.

But is one or two learning days really enough for educators to feel fulfilled? Is it really enough to sustain us, encourage us to employ new ideas in our practice, and support us as we do so?

I’m gonna go with no.

An article curating the qualities of effective professional development tells us that in order for professional development to take hold, educators need sustained contact hours, sometimes up to 20 (Garet, Porter, Desimone, Birman, & Yoon, 2001)…