PD

About 5 years ago I vowed to quit being involved in any committees and to just focus on my job and on becoming the best teacher I could be.  I changed schools (three times now actually), and I found that I was pretty happy just being a teacher.  I can't tell you the reasons (since I don't know them) but people at my new schools would sometimes nominate me for some committee or union position or some other thing (I guess upon reflection it might be because I tend to be a bit vocal), but I would politely decline.  I might go into the feelings of powerlessness (and the feeling of being belittled) I experienced the last time I was on a staffing committee in response to the declination of the nomination, but the end result was the same: I was a teacher and not involved in any other way.  Except that was never really true either.  I coached or supervised all the dances, or just would show up to sporting events and even pop my head into other teachers classes on my prep.  I guess not being involved (in education -- I'm no politician!) is not my way.

Anyway, fast forward to the present.  I am a department head now, and I actually call monthly meetings whether we need them or not.  I am on 3 committees (though the dividing line between them all is quite blurry to me) and I'm doing some extra-curricular stuff.  So much for not getting involved.  So, what has made the difference, and how does the title of this blog fit in.

Two things.  I have an administrator that, as I've mentioned to many of you in private, (or as private as online forums or twitter can be) is supportive, energetic and committed to the students AND the staff, not just to the advancement of their own career.  Also, my board has been working really hard to provide us with useful and meaningful professional development.  A few years back, when I took a course through Queens, the prof encouraged us to reflect on all of our posts and one of the major things I talked about throughout the course was the lack of meaningful P.D.  That has changed.

Today, I was away (and so were about 12 other teachers from my school -- and get this so was one of the administrators and a person from the board!) from school for the afternoon and had the opportunity to participate in a pd session designed to help us become better at what we do by witnessing other teachers and trying to learn from what they have done.  That doesn't explain it well, but it is quite forward thinking in my opinion, and it was worthwhile.  More importantly is what followed.  After the session, a few of us hung back and really talked about things.  In the last month or so, I have had more meaningful discussions following regular meetings of the staff than I think I've had in the last 5 years.  We get together, talk about what happened during our group sessions, and then we get to the real nitty gritty.  The meat and potatoes of the discussion.  We bounce ideas off of each other, and we get to the heart of what we need to do in order for our students to do better.  There isn't any complaining -- just productive (and sometimes creative) talk.  Better yet, the talk leads to something.  We are actually implementing change (ok, planning on it currently -- but individually, I'm doing things differently!).

I really think openness and exchange are the key missing ingredients in education today.  I forget the name of the schools those two teachers began in the US (featured in Waiting for Superman), based upon their study of the teacher 'across the hall' that was accomplishing something with her students, but those schools wouldn't be possible without talking and exchange of ideas that work.  Unfortunately, we don't have that exchange model embedded in current educational practice.  We need to change that.  Of course, most of my readers are twitter followers, and so here I am preaching to the choir.

My son just came down to talk to me and I seem to have lost my train of thought (always assuming there was an end point or logical progression to this entry), so I'll end here for now.