What do teachers need in professional learning?
Learning opportunities for teachers should be data driven, allow room for feedback and reflection and involve input and support from school leadership. Every educator is familiar with professional learning — although historically, this has often meant workshops after school, expert-led seminars and going to conferences.
What are some professional development opportunities for teachers?
You can find plenty of professional development courses specifically for teachers, including:
- Supporting Children with Difficulties in Reading and Writing
- Teaching Character and Creating Positive Classrooms
- Motivating Gen Z Learners: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know
What are some professional goals for teachers?
Multilevel Goals
- To unify the individual, school, family and community with a universal philosophy and a common language
- To encourage accountability across the social strata
- To develop adults who model and practice the positive actions they are teaching students and expecting them to use
What can teachers do to promote learning?
- Feed the brain. School meal programs can help ensure that students receive nutritious meals to help boost focus, attention and memory.
- Build relationships. ...
- Supplement instruction with neuroscience-based interventions. ...
- Give students intensive practice. ...
- Provide timely rewards. ...
Why Is Professional Development Important for Teachers?
Continued professional development for teachers is crucial for educators, because their application of new knowledge will directly affect students. According to Learning Forward, classroom achievement increases when teachers take part in development that is focused on addressing the major learning challenges of their students. Not only does this development help educators update their skills and hone their craft, but it also improves student success.
What is a PDP in teaching?
The PDP is a practical, research-verified approach to elevate teaching standards as well as document personal growth throughout a teacher’s classroom career.
Why do teachers leave the classroom?
During this initial phase of learning and evolution, many teachers may leave the profession because they think they are not accomplishing enough, or because of other educational factors. According to a recent study by the U.S. Department of Education (DoED), up to 17% of new teachers may leave within their first five years. However, development opportunities are an excellent resource for streamlining the profession’s initial learning curve and can even provide new teachers with more experienced mentors. The U.S. DoED study notes that of beginning teachers, those assigned first-year mentors were more likely to still be teaching over time.
What is a leap program?
The LEAP program is a weekly teacher professional development cycle created by the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS). Each cycle has two parts: a 90-minute LEAP seminar and a LEAP coaching touch point, which is a one-on-one feedback session according to the DCPS.
What are some examples of external development opportunities?
These types of collaborative learning environments are examples of external development opportunities. New teachers take years to gain the experience and skills to be effective in the classroom.
What is DC collaborative?
The DC Collaborative offers professional development workshops to all DC public and public charter school teachers. The series includes visual arts, humanities, music, dance, and theater and is focused on integrating those disciplines into applied teaching methods.
Why is collaborative learning important?
Working in collaborative learning environments may also help compress the learning curve, especially for new educators, and serve as an ongoing source of valuable insight for more experienced teachers.
What is Professional Development?
Professional development (PD) is a necessary practice in almost every career field. Education is no exception. For educators, learning doesn’t stop after you earn a teaching degree and start a career at a school.
Why Professional Development is Important for Teachers
Professional development helps ensure the best learning outcomes for students, which has to be the number one priority for any good classroom teacher. Here are four reasons why educators need to invest in professional development.
Professional Development Opportunities for Teachers
Professional development gives teachers a chance to be students again. Not only does PD help educators become experts in their field, but it also fosters the talents of teachers who aspire to be educational leaders and make an impact on student outcomes.
What is the principle 5 of Timperley?
In Principle 5, Timperley reminds us that all learning activities for staff will require both trust and challenge if they are to bring about real change in practice. There is likely to be a difference between teachers’ existing ideas and the ideas being promoted for them to adopt. This implies taking risks. In your leadership of teachers' professional learning, how will you ensure that teachers will feel supported and safe through this process?
What is professional learning in education?
Teacher professional learning is an ongoing cycle that begins with schools identifying the educational outcomes they value for their students. Then they need to identify the knowledge and skills that teachers need so that students can bridge the gap between current understandings and the valued outcomes.
What is Timperley's research?
Timperley reports on the results of her research into what teacher professional learning needs to take into account if it is to be effective for both teachers’ practice and students’ outcomes. She identifies 10 key principles, all of which are interrelated.
What is professional learning in Grafton High School?
Our professional learning community meets regularly and discusses strategies and ideas for integrating meaningful, purposeful professional development. Over the past year, professional learning in Grafton Public Schools has not been something that teachers dread, but rather a series of opportunities to select learning options from a menu. The administration initially develops this menu by creating a request for proposals (RFP). The RFP goes out to all staff, and any educator, admin, specialist, etc. can submit session ideas. These ideas are then collected and shared with staff in a Google form that allows for selection and personalization of one's learning.
What is professional learning?
Professional learning is most effective when educators have the option to personalize the experience and communicate meaningfully with other educators who share their focus. By Andrew Marcinek.
What does lifelong learning look like?
So what does lifelong learning look like in the span of a school year, with limited time for professional learning? The answer is quite simple . And it's happening throughout the world, usually on a Saturday. In case you've been living under a rock, the answer is Edcamps. This is not to say that every facet of the Edcamp model has been perfected or that it will assimilate to every school system and learner. However, there are two key ingredients to which every school should pay attention.
Why is professional learning important?
At its core, professional learning is the key component to improving educator practice and providing new perspectives on an ever-changing profession. While most content has remained consistent throughout time, instructional design, educational policy, and classroom tools and structures have been in constant motion.
What is the guiding principle of education?
In essence, this idea is the guiding principle and philosophy that moves education forward: the desire to be a lifelong learner and model the practice for our students so that they can one day emulate this concept.
What is an edcamp?
When attending an Edcamp, you will see this unfold naturally. An Edcamp creates both time and space for all voices to be heard. It allows for both collegial debate and constructive criticism. Additionally, these offline conversations move at a pace that allows time for processing and reflection.
What is the second ingredient in professional learning?
The second ingredient in successful professional learning is allowing time for conversations and constructive debate. Thanks to the rise of nearly ubiquitous networks and connectivity, there are a myriad of ways to extend learning beyond the walls of any institution. However, I'm not about to tell you that Twitter chats and Voxer are the "greatest professional development ever!" While Twitter and Voxer are both great tools for connecting, they are merely efficiencies in the learning process. They offer convenient ways to connect, but ultimately are driven by shouting voices and minimal listening, processing, and acting.
How Does Teacher Learning Affect Student Outcomes?
The most significant impact of teacher learning is that it affects student learning as well . Whatever metrics school districts use to measure student achievement, whether the focus is on grades, standardized test scores, or college acceptance rates, teacher learning makes a difference.
How Does Professional Development Improve Teaching?
Professional development gives teachers the tools they need to do their jobs well. In a well-designed professional learning system, teachers and other staff reach new levels of skill. Andrea Cook, the Assistant Superintendent of Instruction at Springboro Schools, told us this.
Why Should Teachers Set Professional Growth Goals?
Setting professional goals with teachers can help them stay focused and meet the expectations of school districts. Goals help teachers in four key ways:
Why is professional learning important for teachers?
The point of professional learning for teachers is to help improve their classroom performance and their ability to connect with students. Professional development opportunities that aren't directly relevant to their jobs aren't helpful and may build resentment among teachers.
Why is learning a new teaching practice or theory important?
Learning a new teaching practice or theory can help teachers do a better job of connecting with students, including those students who may seem to be disengaged.
What are the changes teachers must stay on top of?
Along with new teaching methods and new student needs and requirements, teachers must also stay on top of curriculum changes, new classroom formats, and any other factors that may affect students.
Why do schools struggle with professional development?
One reason is that sometimes, a professional development course for teachers can be dry and dull, requiring teachers to sit through presentations in a format they would never use with students. Let’s look at the things teachers actually want from professional learning.
What should future teachers expect?
It also gives teachers a chance to exchange expertise to better their learning community. More communicative schools lead the way to positive outcomes for teachers and students.
What is professional learning?
Professional learning. Professional learning embodies many of the same ideas and goals of professional development. However, this terminology emphasizes a modernized version that encourages interactive learning strategies rather than rote development techniques.
What is professional learning communities?
A major principle of professional learning communities within the same school or area is grouping educators with overlapping responsibilities. If a group of high school teachers all work with the same students throughout the course of a school day, collaborative efforts provide them with the opportunity to build joint lesson plans, create projects that crossover various subjects, or use the same multimedia tools. For example, if a history teacher and English teacher have the same students, and the history teacher has students submit papers using Google Classroom, the English teacher can make use of this system as well so that students have the same experience across multiple classrooms. This not only puts educators on the same page, but also makes it easier for students to submit homework.
What is the biggest shift in professional learning?
Educator technology is perhaps the biggest shift of professional learning. While professional development highlights the need for educators to grow individually, professional learning retools this idea so that teachers are learning how to better serve their students.
What is professional development in school districts?
Professional development in many school districts often takes the form of seminars, lectures or workshops that are supposed to help educators continue to grow in their careers.
Why do teachers work together?
The future holds teachers working together regularly to help each other improve, and ultimately benefit their students.
Why is continuous professional development important?
For current teachers and those working to become teachers, continuous professional development is needed to continue to grow and improve. However, many believe the idea of professional development is somewhat outdated, which is why many school districts are implementing a system of professional learning instead.
