WHY?
As a classroom teacher for over 15 years, I have endured more hours of professional learning than I care to admit. For years, training has been unhelpful and delivered in the most inefficient ways possible. Except for this one time, the “Texas Ice Storm” ruined it because online learning needs electricity. Having the experience of the pandemic and becoming an online teacher overnight opened my eyes to a more efficient world in education. Unfortunately, my district went right back to where it was pre-pandemic. Our professional development happens after school and/or on staff development days. We travel to our district high schools and move from classroom to classroom with our bags and laptops that usually need to be plugged in by 9 and we end up sitting on the floor. Professional learning happens after school in staff meetings or during planning periods. We use the workshop model currently and it is ineffective for everyone I speak with on my campus. I feel that trust is another big problem on my campus. Teachers are trusted to learn how to teach online, live stream their classes, manage google classrooms, but when the pandemic settled down we were not trusted to do our jobs using new tools and the innovative ways of using technology to be more effective and efficient in our daily teaching/learning. If we were trusted as professionals, I believe professional learning would have more autonomy for teachers. Teachers choosing their learning paths gives them ownership and that is how teachers (learners) grow. Learning should be ongoing and specific with peer coaching from trusted professionals.
Meeting the different needs of students in an efficient way is one goal I want to achieve through the implementation of station rotations in a blended learning environment. My Innovation Plan proposes a plan for being efficient, closing learning gaps, and differentiating with little to no whole group lessons in elementary classrooms. If elementary students can learn this way, teachers most certainly can, too. We differentiate for our students, but who is differentiating for the teachers. Teachers have strengths and weaknesses and different ways of learning. Teachers deserve better.
Using the five principles of effective PD (Gulamhussein, 2013), we can create PD courses that give teachers choice, ownership, and voice over their learning growth that will be more efficient and effective and close the teacher’s learning gaps.
HOW?
I created my video using Canva, and I am extremely grateful it worked out as easily as it did. I spent a lot of time with sticky notes and organizing my thoughts for change. I purchased Resonate and that really helped me strengthen the impact of the presentation. At first, I thought I needed to find the images and the words would come. WRONG. Words first, then images. I went with the question-and-answer organizational approach. Once my handwritten notes were organized, I matched what slides I would have up when I was reading what notes. When I woke up Sunday morning, I didn’t know how I was going to record my voice while going through the slides. Canva was so easy and required zero training. I just clicked “record manually moving through slides” and only had to record 3 different times before I was happy with it. Unfortunately, I could not figure out how to have music in the background. I am planning to add that before I present it to my principal and instructional coaches. This was my first video using slides to present something. I feel pretty good about how it turned out. I know that this will improve as I create more presentations. I enjoy creative assignments like this one, especially when I feel so passionate about the change I hope it brings.
WHAT?
References
Gulamhussein, A. (2013). Teaching the Teachers Effective Professional Development in an Era of High Stakes Accountability. Center for Public Education. Retrieved from http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/system/files/2013-176_ProfessionalDevelopment.pdf
TNTP. (2015). The Mirage: Confronting the Hard Truth About Our Quest for Teacher Development. Retrieved from http://tntp.org/publications/view/evaluation-and-development/the-mirage-confronting-the-truth-about-our-quest-for-teacher-development