Category: Professional Development

Rethinking PD (Part 1)

This post is Part 1 in a 3 part series that will focus on building a virtual professional learning experience that is a hybrid of face to face PD and virtual PD. In Part 1, I will focus on what led to this hybrid PD model and what it looks like currently.

What Led To the Need for a Virtual PD Option
Through my work at Friday Institute, I’ve visited many districts (LEAs) and schools across NC. Much of the work that I do is providing face to face professional learning experiences for educators. Oftentimes this model includes approximately 3-4 visits to their district or school during a given school year – with each visit consisting of a full day of professional learning (6-7 hours). Sometimes this learning is facilitated PD, and sometimes it’s coaching or learning walks.

One of the districts I’ve served this school year is located in a remote part of Western NC. They are a 6 hour drive from where I live, which makes traveling for PD difficult, especially during the months when weather is not favorable. Because of their location, weather that might not seem treacherous in other parts of the state, can shut down their normal day to day operations causing them to miss multiple school days. Another factor with serving a district that has a very remote location is trying to plan the actual face to face PD days around both their calendar and the chance of adverse weather. Generally, we have to plan for PD at the beginning of the school year, a session in early fall, and then two more well into late winter or early spring. This causes a huge gap of time between PD sessions 2 and 3, often leading to a disconnect between myself (the facilitator) and the learners.

I share all of that, not to set up a situation that seems insurmountable (we’ve been doing this on our team for years), but to lead into why I felt a need to explore an alternative option for professional learning, especially in the interim between face to face PD sessions. I know that face to face can’t be matched in its ability to truly impact learners, build relationships, and offer hands on experiences. However, I am beginning to see that face to face PD is not largely scaleable and has limitations and constraints when things like adverse weather is involved. I also realize that many districts and schools we serve have a need to see me (the facilitator) and work with me more than 4 times during a school year. In order to promote sustainability, a hybrid PD model offers the opportunity to create learning experiences, meet with small groups and individuals to provide coaching, and a chance to continue to connect with learners.

What We Know All Good Professional Learning Experiences Should Have
There is a plethora of research on best practices and models for sustainable and impactful professional learning experiences (see works consulted at the end of this post). Whether we are creating face to face learning experiences or virtual ones, there are some common threads that must be present for learners to feel that the experience is both sustainable and impactful (also, please note this list is in no way exhaustive).

  • Is Content Focused
    Professional learning must be content focused. It is very important to give learners not just what they need, but also what they want. Taking into account their passion to learn makes the learning experience much more meaningful and helps to ensure that they will take and use what they learn and explore during a session. Content focused PD experiences have specific learning goals and are grounded in things like solid instructional practice and seamlessly embedded technology use. These learning experiences must also be structured so that learners can see curriculum and pedagogical connections. It’s important for them to be able to visualize and then actualize how what they’re learning will effect student outcomes.
  • Allows for Active Learning
    All professional learning experiences should give learners a chance to actively learn and use content. Educators need time to not only explore resources, information, tools, etc., but also the time to put these things into practice. Sometimes this is facilitator led activities and sometimes this is self-paced exploration, modeling learner agency, that results in some type of product that they can immediately use with students. By creating environments where learners are given the chance to actively engage, we are making it safe to take risks, fail forward, and test and iterate ideas.
  • Models Good Instructional Practices
    In planning and facilitating professional learning experiences, we have to model solid pedagogical practice for learners. Modeling these practices allows the learner to see it in action, helping him/her visualize this for their own students. It is important to also include here embedded technology use, time for reflection, and opportunities for both giving and receiving feedback. As we create PD that models good instructional practice, it is also important to promote the idea of learner agency. Learners should have choice and be given opportunities to drive their own learning.
  • Promotes Collaboration
    Professional learning experiences should have time built in where participants can learn from each other. This might be guided or scaffolded learning activities where learners use each other’s expertise and skills to solve problems or create new products or understandings, or it may be team challenges that they complete using each other for support. Regardless of how, learners need time to practice collaborating in a safe space.
  • Builds in Time for Feedback and Reflection
    During any learning experience, learners must have time for both low stakes feedback and to reflect on not only what they’re learning, but how this learning makes them feel, what they will take from it, and how the learning could have been more effective. It is can also be helpful to institute a feedback loop to help teachers monitor implementation of the things they learned during PD.
  • Is Sustainable
    Planning and preparing for sustainability can be hard but is so necessary for any kind of professional learning. When my phase of the work is done with a district or school, it’s important to leave them with momentum, capacity, and expertise to continue on. In order to create sustainability, PD must include coaching and expert support. These should be available throughout the learning process, as well as in the interim between sessions. It is also important to provide follow up to help learners implement what they’re learning. Follow up happens throughout the process, but there should be scaffolds in place for this to continue once the PD is over with.

What Does Virtual PD (A Hybrid Model) Look Like?
My goal is to create a virtual professional learning experience that is a hybrid model. Virtual PD would be used to supplement face to face PD experiences in the interim and would feel much like a face to face learning experience. Often we visit a district or school approximately four times a school year – a hybrid PD model (face to face + virtual PD experiences) offers the opportunity to continue learning and build on concepts already learned, create coaching experiences that are ongoing during the school year, and model instructional practice that affords learners agency.

Using a platform, such as Zoom, the facilitator can create virtual experiences that are much like face to face PD. With only one facilitator, each time slot (session) would offer one live virtual learning experience and a few self-paced, on your own learning experiences.

An important aspect of creating a sustainable virtual learning model is supporting learners during the actual event. There should be live, virtual support with the facilitator built into the day (between sessions, scheduled “office hours”, or even Q&A sessions). This support and scaffolding has to be advertised and communicated so that learners understand its role and how to access this support during learning. One drawback of a one facilitator model is that while live virtual experiences are happening, the facilitator will not be available to answer questions and offer support to those learners choosing to do self-paced activities. To counterbalance this, there should also be on the ground support in the school or district that is being served. This could be Instructional Technology facilitators, Media Coordinators, etc. – It’s important to recognize and utilize the capacity in the district or school. These people should be available during the event to assist learners with questions and technology issues that might arise. It is also helpful to offer a backchannel or way that learners can “ask” questions or make comments that can be seen synchronously and asynchronously by the facilitator and other learners.

When planning virtual PD, an important thing to consider is the overarching theme or learning goals for the day. Will the experience be a buffet of topics or will it focus on specific learning goals? Both options work in different ways.

How We Got Started
Before exploring the virtual PD option for this district, I had visited them for two face to face sessions – one in October 2017 and one in January 2018. Both sessions were very learner focused, hands-on, and offered much time for feedback and reflection. I also have each learner complete an evaluation at the end of each face to face PD session, giving me feedback and reflection on their experience as a learner. Digging into the evaluations from both the October and January face to face sessions gave me some grows to consider moving forward:

      • There’s a huge perceived divide in technology confidence and ability from the learners themselves. Many of the learners feel that a small group (5-6) of their peers are very advanced and are bored during PD because I have to slow down for those that don’t catch on as quickly or need more help. The interesting thing about this is that those that are considered “more advanced” give very positive feedback regarding the PD experience and never complain that it moves too slow. Again, this points to perception and the need to help build technology confidence in those that are lacking this.
      • Some of the learners feel that the face to face sessions are too content heavy. They stress that only having an hour during an activity that includes pedagogical practice and embedded technology use, is not enough time to dive in and explore content. They enjoy the hands on applications of instructional practice and technology use, but some wish that learning could be less “theoretical”.
      • Some learners simply want tool instruction. They want the basics on all of the tools that I feature (in application). Unfortunately, while this may be a request, it is not in line with best practices in professional learning and would do little to benefit instructional practice. Since this need seems to recur in the evaluations, the district leadership team and I discussed that this is a perfect use of their capacity – using their tech staff and media coordinator to do some of the “basics” training when it is needed or desired. We are still working to find the best way to accomplish this.
      • Some comments on prior evaluations mentioned the need to be able to work at their own pace and have more choice in their learning. This call for more learner agency helped to drive some of the decisions in what to offer during the virtual learning event.

After I reflected on the evaluations from the two prior sessions, I considered how to know when my learners would be ready for this type of experience. Due to our time constraints in both planning and implementing the actual virtual learning day, I was not able to construct a formal readiness quotient, but I have started to think about what this would look like. This is an important question to consider before thinking about creating a hybrid PD model (which I will address further in Part 2 and 3).

There is much planning that must happen prior to a virtual learning experience. I met with the district team multiple times to explain the idea, go over the data that led to this decision, and to get their input on content, their capacity to offer support, and the availability of technology for the event. We also had a test run one week before where we tested the technology and platform from various places in the district to make sure that everything would run seamlessly. 

In Part 2 of this series, I will outline the actual event and talk more about the planning and scheduling choices made to accommodate learning.

Works Consulted:

5 Strategies For Better Teacher Professional Development. (2014). TeachThought. Retrieved 2 April 2018, from https://www.teachthought.com/pedagogy/5-strategies-better-teacher-professional-development/

5 Ways to Transform PD with Best Practices for Learning. (2018). Activelylearn.com. Retrieved 2 April 2018, from https://www.activelylearn.com/post/transform-pd-best-practices

Effective Teacher Professional Development. (2018). Learning Policy Institute. Retrieved 2 April 2018, from https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/effective-teacher-professional-development-report

Glows and Grows

I don’t remember when I started using the terms “Glows” and “Grows” for reflection. When I try to trace it back in my work (and in my head), I think it came from my friend and she-ro Buffy Hamilton and the phenomenal work that she does with students and teachers. Whatever their origin, glows and grows have become my way of thinking of positive and critical feedback and reflection. I use this both during professional learning experiences that I facilitate and personally as I’m trying to be a more reflective practitioner.

I describe glows as the positive things we see, feel and hear. Whether it’s an artifact, lesson plan, student work or an experience we’re commenting on, there’s always something glowing. Grows are not quite the opposite of glows, or at least I don’t like to think of them that way. To me, a grow is anything that can be suggested to elevate the work or experience. I like to think of it this way because it leaves room for feedback even on the most amazing things we see, feel, hear and experience.

Each time I facilitate a learning experience with educators, I do a final evaluation at the end of the session. Both because my supervisor expects this data and because I want to know how the experience I designed resonated (or didn’t) with my colleagues or audience. We have a standard evaluation through Google Forms that we use in all of our school and district PD projects. At the beginning of this school year, I considered the questions I was asking at the end of PD sessions and decided that I would add a few more questions to my evaluations. I am very interested in sustainability – the idea that after I leave once the PD is done, the momentum and excitement created will carry on. That the people I’ve had the opportunity to interact with will continue to feel empowered, inspired and move to a model of redelivery and delivery for their colleagues and peers. Basically, I want to make sure the learning doesn’t stop once I leave a place.

Some of the questions I have added to my evaluations to solicit more qualitative data are:

  • What did you learn today that you will use to inform your instruction and design learning experiences for your students?
  • What did you learn or accomplish today that you will teach or share with a colleague?
  • How have you shared what you learned at the last FI PD session with your colleagues or students (or even people outside of the building)?
  • How have you found ways to elaborate and expand on what you learned at the last FI PD session in new and different ways?
  • In what way(s) have these FI PD sessions impacted or changed your practice? If they haven’t, please explain why.

I realize that by adding extra questions structured around sustainability, I am opening myself up to critical feedback. To me, however, this is a necessity. I aim for growth and the only way I can get there is to ask and then act on the feedback I’m given.

It occurred to me during a recent conversation with a dear friend in which he asked me some specific things about the way I approach my evaluations and reflective practice, that I have yet to share my specific process for reflecting on feedback.

I like to look at my evaluations the day after I facilitate PD. This gives me time to rest and reflect before I take into account how the learning experience resonated with educators. I collect my evaluation data through simple Google Forms. This data feeds into spreadsheets. I have an evaluation for the first day of PD (the kickoff or session 1), an evaluation for the sessions in between and a final evaluation for the last PD session with a group. All three types of evaluations are separate, but feed into one spreadsheet (in separate tabs). This allows me to sort and look at individual contracts or look at PD as a whole.

When I begin unpacking data, I use a simple coding system to quickly mark the comments, suggestions and questions that I want to come back to during my reflection. I mark grows with green – this is anything that gives critical insight into how the learning experiences could have been improved. Grows include things like what people found most challenging, learning that they are still yearning for, suggestions for making the session more comfortable and what they would’ve changed about the experience. Then I study the data for glows, which I mark in yellow. For the glows, I don’t include every positive comment. Instead I try to focus on the qualitative data that gives actionable praise. I tend to mark comments about how the learning experience will inform instruction, what they learned that they will share with colleagues, how they will expand upon their learning and how their practice has changed as a result of the session(s).

I immediately use this data to create reflective notes for the district’s or school’s upcoming PD sessions. These notes are also great when I have planning meetings with district and school leadership about the direction we are headed.

After creating my notes and spending time reflecting on the experience, I collect all of the glows and grows into a separate spreadsheet. This spreadsheet has a tab for glows and one for grows. On each sheet, I have a row for each separate contract. I add to them on a revolving basis, inserting dates and my own notes and comments. The purpose of these sheets is to collect all of the data in one place where I can look at it over the course of an entire school year (or contract). At the end of a district or school’s contract, I will examine the data to get a complete picture of the work’s effectiveness, educator growth and suggestions for sustainability for them moving forward. This data helps me see if changing my practice based on the feedback I received, makes each forthcoming session more effective. I also use it to help me answer two major questions I’ve been focusing on:

  • Are you doing/designing/creating work you’re proud of?
  • How is your work (not you) impacting the future, building something, and empowering others?

While this approach is simplistic, it helps me to focus on the work and how this work helps the educators I serve feel engaged, challenged, inspired, intelligent and empowered.

 

Sustainability

In the past two months, many of the school professional development accounts that I work on have come to a close. I’ve left schools, said goodbye to educators, and wished them luck in the closing of the school year. And next month, I will do the same with the third cohort of coaches in the NCDLCN program.

This is a bittersweet time for numerous reasons. I’m proud of how much these educators have grown – and in turn how much their growth is affecting their students. I’ve seen confidence grow, leadership capacity be born, and creativity run rampant. My heart has been so full seeing how hard these people work so that they can create better learning experiences for their kids. It’s been amazing to be a part of this growth – leading these educators to discover more about their own ability to be creative and intentional.

I am so proud of the amazing work I get to be a part of – the way this work impacts so many people across the state. As I leave each of these places and say goodbye to these educators, I am reminded of the importance of sustainability. Sure, there are always evaluations that we collect from participants, which we use to help shape the scope of our work, but how do we know that what we do really empowers these people to carry on, to keep exploring, improving, and growing?

I don’t have all of the answers, but I do have questions that I will be asking myself as I reflect on my work over the past six months:

How do we ensure that when we leave, our work is sustaining?

How do we empower people to continue to learn and grow after we are gone?

How can we help ensure that people can carry on the momentum of the past year?

How do we check for sustainability?

Do we continue to grow these relationships?

While I work primarily with adults, I think the same questions can be asked of our work in classrooms with students.

I want to be sure that I’ve not only empowered and inspired people, but that I’ve set the stage for them to have the confidence to continue to grow, be more intentional in their instructional practice, and lead others to do the same.

 

Intentionality

I have a confession – brace yourself. As a former librarian, I’ll probably lose so many cool points for admitting this, but I hate writing book reviews. I love talking to people about what I read, but when it comes to reviewing something, I struggle, and generally fail. It’s always hard for me to articulate exactly how a book makes me feel – because that’s just it, if it’s worth reviewing, it’s because the book made me feel something and probably hit a personal cord. Also, sharing my feelings is not always easy for me. So, I’m more inclined to rate it on Goodreads, maybe snap a quick Instagram picture of the cover, and write a short sentence about how you should read it too. But, yesterday I finished a book that I feel like I need to say some things about.

So, it’s called The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F***. I know what you’re thinking – that sounds awfully cynical, negative even. Before I started reading it, I felt the same way. But what I found were awesome anecdotes, not on how to not care about anything, but on being very intentional about what we chose to care about and invest our time and energy in.

So here are a few of my favorite takeaways, in no particular order:

“We have evolved to always live with a certain degree of dissatisfaction and insecurity, because it’s the mildly dissatisfied and insecure creature that’s going to do the most work to innovate and survive.”

Instead of focusing on the wrongs done to me, I have to train myself to view dissatisfaction, insecurity, let down as an opportunity to redesign my circumstances. This view makes it easy to understand the principle of the sphere of influence. Some things are just out of our control; however, our reactions to these things aren’t. We might not be able to change what someone does to us, but we can always change how we let it affect us.

 

“Emotions are part of the equation of our lives, but not the entire equation.”

I’d scream this from the rooftops if I could! As someone who struggles with sharing emotions and sometimes even admitting and understanding my own emotions, I value the idea that rational, realistic thought means just as much as listening to your heart. And when we think about where we invest our love, time, and energy, rationality becomes paramount.

 

“If you want to change how you see your problems, you have to change what you value and/or how you measure failure/success.”

I am too hard on myself. I, like many other people, tend to set my measurements for both success and failure on those of others – and comparison is a dangerous thing. Oftentimes I set very unrealistic measurements for success, which are almost always impossible to attain. I operate under the assumption that I could be doing more, doing something better, because look at her, she’s doing so much. This leads to unrealistic measures of failure – instead of celebrating myself and even the smallest victories, I’m constantly feeling as if I have not done enough. What I’d like to see, for myself, is a more realistic gauge of both my success and my failure, focusing on viewing the failure as a stepping stone to accomplishing my goals.

 

“Growth is an endlessly iterative process…personal growth can actually be quite scientific. Our values are our hypotheses: this behavior is good and important; that other behavior is not. Our actions are the experiments; the resulting emotions and thought patterns are our data.”

As someone who tends to see things very literally (my husband often calls me Drax), this was a #micdrop statement. I love the idea of seeing growth as a scientific process. To me, this makes me feel so much more at ease with allowing myself space and vulnerability to accept areas where I need to be honest about choices and change.

 

“How will the world be different and better when you’re gone? What mark will you have made? What influence will you have caused?”

This is the ultimate self-reflective question. As I wrote last month, I want to leave no disaster in my wake. I’ve spent most of my life trying to make a positive impact on the people around me. I’m a fixer and a helper by nature, so leaving behind a legacy that I’m proud of and that has helped as many people as it can is so, so important to me. As I continue to grow, I realize I want to be more than nice and caring, I want to be inspiring. I want to make people feel confident in their own abilities and intelligence. I want to cause influence that leads to positive change.

Lately I’ve Read

Since coming back to work from the holiday break, I’ve been moving non-stop. There’s so much I want to write about; professional development I’ve been doing in districts, NCDLCN and how amazing this year’s coaching cadre is, the wonderful work I’ve seen while shadowing my colleagues, but I just haven’t had time this week to focus my thoughts in a way that would justify any of those experiences.

Instead of focusing on one, single thing this week, I am going to share some of the awesome things I’ve been reading – things that have caused me to take notice, reflect on my practice and, ultimately, continue to learn and grow.

 

“Great Artists Write” by Paul Jun

This piece tackles the idea of self reflection through writing. Since I’ve been personally writing and reflecting on my new experiences at FI, I was instantly drawn into this. I love the idea of using writing as a way to champion our creativity, critical thinking and clarity. And, as someone who taught writing to high school students for most of her career, I believe in its power to transform people. This post also offers practical ideas for kickstarting your own reflective writing – all of which are super accessible.

 

“You’re working hard. But are you heading towards the right life goals?” by Jessica Abel

I came across Jessica Abel’s site by accident through someone else’s tweet. But I am so glad that I did. I have loved all of her posts I’ve read so far. This one, challenges our ideas of goals and setting goals that are not only attainable, but goals that we are passionate about – simply put, the right ones. I love her assertion that creative success is mostly about defining success for yourself, envisioning not just your future projects or productivity, but your actual, future self. I enjoyed her advice for setting goals and the candor with which she tells her own story of failed attempts.

 

“Hate PD? Try Voluntary Piloting.” by Krista Taylor

Without giving too much away, this is a piece that all educators should read. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard complaints about professional development – it’s too long, too short, doesn’t apply, boring, confusing, not enough tools featured, and the list goes on and on. This model of PD is different though. It’s small, grass roots and asserts that even a small, passionate group of educators can spark transformational change. This one will inspire you to act.

 

“How I Come Up With 20 New Ideas a Day” by Rodd Chant

This post offers such a great idea for being creative each day! He gives a few, simple ways to come up with new ideas, whether they turn into to larger projects or not. As someone who works around brilliant, creative people, I feel pressure to constantly be innovative, even though this isn’t always easy. I love his advice that you have to let your ideas flow without editing yourself, since, at the end of the day, idea creation is all for you. Whether an idea is good or bad doesn’t matter, all that matters is that it happens.

 

“Man on the Moon” by Jonathon Wennstrom

I was drawn to this post for two reason. First, it’s written by an educator, someone in the trenches. Second, it’s simple and all about impacting students. He gives us a siren call to check our egos at the door so that we can simply focus on doing impactful, transformational work. While the post is short, it reminds me of why I love being a part of the PLLC team at FI – we are about the work, not about the accolades. We come together to focus on creating learning experiences that lead to impacting students. It really is that easy. We don’t compete, compare or criticize, we just do good work.

 

“A Class Where Students Create the Curriculum” by Natalie Orenstein

I wish all students were able to have learning experiences like the ones described in this post. I wish that it didn’t take an act of Congress to enable these conditions (thanks Greg) and I wish that this story was the norm, not the exception and was reproducible in every district. Even if it takes baby steps to create these types of experiences for kids, it’s worth dreaming and working towards.

 

“We Ask Our Kids What They Learn Each Day. Why Don’t We Ask Ourselves?” by Rupa Chandra Gupta

I love this post (and most of the things published on EdSurge). It will make you reflect and consider the difference between reactive and proactive learning. As a true believer in the importance of lifelong learning, and as someone who is always looking for opportunities to learn, I think it’s worth the time it takes to read this if it makes someone consider being more proactive and seeking out opportunities for growth.

 

“32 Productivity Tips from the World’s Top Designers” by John Brownlee

This article is exactly what it says, tips on how to be more productive this year. While the tips are from people in the design world, the suggestions are very relevant to anyone – and have many applications in education. I enjoyed reading this and will be using some of what I read to help myself be more productive. Besides, shouldn’t we be working smarter, not necessarily harder?