As a reflective practitioner, I spend time (almost weekly) studying the evaluation data participants submit after each PD session I lead. I identify glows and grows, look at my growth as a facilitator over time, and notice whether the changes I make each session resonate with learners. I wrote more about glows and grows here.
In reflecting lately, I have noticed more and more participants asking for less content and more time. I lead a lot of PD – sometimes 3 or 4 sessions a week. Creating agendas, developing content, and customizing that content for specific audiences is second nature. Because of this, it’s easy to take for granted that I am highly comfortable with the content being presented.
When learners ask for less content, it’s important not to view the request as laziness or disengagement. What they are really communicating is that they aren’t as comfortable with the content – it’s new to them – and they need think time. They need time to explore and process what they’re learning. They need to go slowly.
Slowly.
Slowing down, offering less content and more time to process is something I’m working hard to do. Yesterday, during PD at a middle school I serve, I created an agenda that was far less packed than previous ones. We focused on learning frameworks and designing learning experiences for students that are both pedagogically sound and innovative. Usually we spend time learning about these frameworks, playing a few “games” to familiarize ourselves with them, and then we move onto a larger activity to apply our knowledge. Yesterday, instead of pushing the flow of learning to allow for all of this, I decided to go slowly.
We introduced learning frameworks under the lens of what digital learning can look like. We spent time talking, sharing, and exploring a small number of really solid resources that offer pedagogical supports for digital learning. What I scheduled to take an hour and a half, ended up taking most of the morning.
My instinct was to cut content so that we could move on, but I decided to let my audience set the pace. Instead of forcing the learning along so we could get to everything I had planned, I offered them more time when I could tell they needed it and allowed the conversation to turn into teachable moments. What resulted was a very solid session on exploring both pedagogical and digital supports for their 1:1 classrooms. They dove into awesome articles, sharing their newly formulated understandings and explored a plethora of digital tools that will help support sound pedagogical practice. I was still able to weave in tools that they could use in application, as well as, protocols for reflection, sharing, and feedback that they can use with students.
Our day rounded out with learning walks after lunch and an hour of open exploration time for the very last part of the session. During this time, I offered them two choices – they were able to openly dive into anything we looked at during the session or use some of the scaffolded activities I provided for them if open exploration was too general or made them feel unsafe.
This is what I found. Going slowly is exactly what they needed. It’s far less important to try and fit all of the content in and much more necessary to provide thinking time, even if that time exceeds what I’ve planned. By letting the learners drive the day’s agenda, I created an environment where learner agency thrived. The teachers were much more satisfied at 3pm when our day ended, which was clearly communicated in the day’s evaluation and their comments to me as they were leaving.
There is so much power in going slowly. Taking time to not only understand your learner’s needs, but to create time and space for them to drive the learning process, even if that means you aren’t able to accomplish everything on the day’s agenda. We were able to have much deeper and richer conversations, not just about our own learning, but also about the experiences we provide for students.