Posts Tagged “goals”

Professional Development

It’s part of every teacher’s life, professional development. In the past, in our district you had two kinds, the piece the district chose for everyone to follow and your own goals, that you chose(you know the one that really pertained to your teaching). Recently, in our district this has changed. The personal goals are now tied to the district wide goals (in other words, they are choosing both).

Since this change, we have embarked on a few new “next best thing that will increase student performance and test scores” adventures. First the focus was on vocabulary. All grade levels developed a list of pertinent vocabulary word and determined their importance to the curriculum. These lists were compiled, dispersed and I am sure filed. It was a bunch of busy work that is now on a shelf or in a drawer. Strategies for teaching vocabulary were also taught. That piece of the instruction was relevant and teachers are continuing to use it. Personal goal for this district wide goal – put an example of a vocabulary lesson you use in your portfolio. (Um, ……I already had one actually)

There was supposed to be more to the vocabulary adventure, but it was cut short. For some reason it was imperative we move on to Reading Comprehension. Again we were told it was the next most wonderful thing to improve student achievement and test scores. Seemed logical to us, so we shelved the vocabulary materials, and willingly grabbed the new reading materials. The trainer informed us that we would be learning a series of strategies that can be utilized with all students, no matter their reading level to improve their comprehension and lead them to using print. Let’s see…..we learned a total of……you guessed it…..ONE. The read aloud, is the only strategy we learned before the next switch was made. Personal goal for this district wide goal – put and an example of a read aloud lesson plan in your portfolio. (Ok, so I didn’t have that one.)

There was supposed to be much more to the reading comprehension adventure, in fact at the beginning we were told that it would take a few years to complete. BUT….the next year, we were on to the gold seal lessons of CORR. It was also touted as the next most wonderful thing, something that would be part of our professional development for more than a year. (is anyone else no longer hearing “RAH RAH RAH”…..but instead “BLAH BLAH BLAH”) Of course the personal goal was to create a lesson and get it gold sealed (and guess what…..you could put it in your portfolio!) I wrote up and submitted a lesson I do every year with my students, without any changes. It was gold sealed and my world was happy. (and yes, it was already in my portfolio) BUT WAIT – everyone did that….and now we are moving on again.

This time the professional development is “differentiated instruction”. We are just getting started; the first meeting was the prerequisite pep rally. “It’s not a strategy, it’s a philosophy! You won’t complete an assignment and put it on your shelf (or in your portfolio), you will integrate it into your teaching. This isn’t something we can cover in a year, this will be a long term journey, lasting 3 to 4 years. It will benefit students, improve their performance and in turn, improve test scores.” Wait, I have heard this before, and not just once or twice, but EVERY TIME WE START! I am afraid, now, my enthusiasm is not what it should be.

As a teacher, I really do want to learn whatever strategy or philosophy I can to help my students be as successful as they can be. I think every teacher does. There has to be a better way. If your professional development has been spectacular, please share! Those of us in mediocre land would love to hear about it.