No Gurus, More Products,
Tougher Intellectual Content
[Here's one district administrator's e-mail response to Hayes Mizell's ideas
about "The Components of a Comprehensive Staff Development Plan."]
Focus. Professional development should have a link to district/school/classroom
standards or support them in some way. That's a first principle.
Professional setting and delivery. No 'gurus' with charismatic,
content-free presentations. More like seminars around issues and problems
in learning and instruction (which includes content knowledge, how kids
learn, instructional strategies but not out of context with instructional
goals and standards and content requirements.
Built around products. Professional development should
lead to a product, be it a thought piece, a televised lesson in front of
kids, a roundtable critique and debriefing of a televised lesson or classroom
visit, an assignment that is tried out with kids and critiqued with colleagues,
or a "dry run" presentation of tought content with colleagues
to try out instructional strategies.
Challenging intellectual content. Let's get past the 'engage
in learning' stuff and have some staff development devoted to tough intellectual
content which could be delivered in a traditional way (read and discuss).
Hear and answer. Read, try out and discuss. No artifical seperations between
'strategies' and 'content.' Teachers are by profession scholars just as
doctors are by profession scientists. Let's get back to our roots.
Shared responsibility for staff development. Rotating responsibility
where the 'stuff' of the inservice is rotated among teachers, perhaps as
a planning team working with an expert if it's 'new stuff,' or as presenters
supported by experts (meaning someone who is further down the trail in a
certain area) while they plan the inservice.
Multiperspective. Include multiple perspectives in staff
development to avoid developing a 'politically correct' set of outcomes.
For example, when you say 'middle school,' the politically correct inservice
is cooperative learning, multiple intelligences, etc., but 'where's the
beef?' So a particularly engaging presentation or session focusing on strategies
might also include some less interactive ways of delivering material or
involving students in learning, or some contradictory approaches -- not
to set up an either/or situation, but to help us entertain simultaneously
some contradictory information. It's good for us, and it's good for students.
Evaluation. Include some of our teachers as 'evaluators'
of inservice and rotate this cadre. Have them help write and administer
the evaluation pieces or observe classes and write some notes or summarize
inservice evaluations. All this is inservice, too, especially the part where
teachers have to focus on what they need to ask to 'evaluate.'
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