Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Support and Pressure

Professional development can be a tricky thing - depending on whom you’re working with. For the most part, this being my first year, I’ve focused my efforts on folks who demonstrate a readiness to make a shift in their thinking and and classroom environment. So far, I’ve had a pretty easy time of working with teachers. When I put workshops together, I try to structure agendas that communicate a clear message of support. I also feel that needs to be balanced with expectation. And it’s how that expectation is communicated that can be a challenge with some teachers.

Yesterday I was working with a group of teachers all day. One of the ways that I try to hold teachers accountable is to encourage them to reflect in writing and then post on a workshop blog. Because of the environment that is created during the workshop, most teachers don’t even see this activity as pressure to reflect, commit thoughts and ideas to text, and publicly share them. What they’re really doing is creating their own expectations and pressure - for each other. This can be further reinforced by using their posts as idea generators for discussion.

Like I said, I’ve been pretty lucky with this sort of “pressure” working because I’ve focused on teachers who have no problem with this shift in professional development. Yesterday, however, there was one teacher that was resistent and didn’t actually end up posting anything. It will be interesting how this balance between support and pressure plays out between now and our final session with this group on May 16.

I think the challenge with professional develpment is communicating (in subtle ways) that there is an expectation to do something with new knowledge. And it’s also equally important that any work to meet that expectation will receive support. So often professional development is lacking one or the other. When there is no expectation, teachers will do nothing with their knowledge. When there is no support, they’ll feel adrift and may never reach their goal of implementation. Without the support and pressure (expectations), the whole professional development model crumbles.

Posted by Randy on 05/01 at 04:52 PM
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