As my principal and I planned our PD for this current school year, we decided to take a step towards modeling 21st century teaching/learning. We each chose a book that we thought would be of benefit to our teachers (What Great Teachers Do Differently by Todd Whitaker, Teach Like a Champion by Doug Lemov), and each built a wiki with study questions for teachers to respond to and discuss. In addition, we posted reflection questions and asked each teacher to blog their responses. The wiki and blog were housed on an internal Apple server. At the time this felt revolutionary (we had not yet taken steps down our 1:1 path), and our teachers were cautious. We sweetened the deal by "giving them back" the time on those PD days to use for their own educational purposes if they had already responded on the wiki before the meeting.
What was the result? On one side, it inspired some of the best conversations about teaching that I have had in a very long time. People whom I usually just pass in the hallway were sharing strategies and experiences that would never have been shared in a standard PD meeting format. We weren't paying a load of money to bring in a speaker to talk at us (Professional Listening?), we were making use of the knowledge and experiences of the master teachers within our own building...our own resources.
On the other hand, we had some teachers who waited until that PD day and then just put in their answers to the questions without reflecting or responding to comments made by others. Obviously, the fact that almost every teacher participated is not only amazing, but also speaks volumes about the amazing staff that I have to work with!
More than anything, this experience has given our staff "baby steps" towards moving towards a 1:1 environment and I recommend it to any administrator. It is modeling that 2.0 philosophy where we put individuals in charge of their own learning with us guiding the way. There are some definite changes that need to be made, but that is for Part Two.
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