It Goes Both Ways

Hmm. So, I just read a blog about how much teachers hate in-services. The title was "If Teachers Planned In-Service Training".  Interestingly enough, somehow three or four years ago, I got roped in to designing and planning our professional development. I was on the flip side for the first time in my teaching career, and it was anything but fun.  It was intimidating. It's also one of the hardest things to plan because everything that the teacher complained about in the blog is the attitude of many teachers everywhere...including my school. Including ME when I get sent to these random meetings that I shall not name.

Planning professional development sucks. Plain and simple. Teachers often don't want to be there, they're tired of hearing stuff they've heard before, they're tired of trying something new, and it's obvious that many believe it's a waste of their time. It got to a point when I was literally trying to figure out the shortest amount of time to present something (I managed to get it down to 15 minutes), and I started to grow disheartened by the whole process. Maybe I still am.

I know that in-services can be a pain in the ass. I know that some people have no fashion sense and are fond of saying the same word over and over again. MMkayyy.

But, I also think teachers need to have some perspective. When we walk into a room already confident that what we are going to hear is a waste of our time, we probably won't hear anything worthwhile even if it's there. (Yet, we want our students in our classroom ready to learn!)

When we refuse to take part in discussion, whether it's whole group, a think-pair-share, or round table, then we lose the chance to learn from the other teachers in our building. Funny, we would be pissed off if we asked our students to do a think pair share and they blew it off. "But, my stuff is important!" (uh-huh)

Data and statistics are important. The key is figuring out which ones matter, and some do. A lot. Focus on the data that matter and move forward in a meaningful way.

I'm not a big fan of warm and fuzzy.  It is most definitely a waste of time and beyond annoying. But the concept of stepping outside of our comfort zone is not. It's a worthwhile task and frankly, I've seen too many schools implode because the faculty and staff didn't know how to speak to each other respectfully. Or how to speak. At all.

In short, what I've learned about in-services from being on the flipped side, is that we could all benefit from a little self-reflection.  Join the planning team, trust me, they would love to have you. We could also benefit from real dialogue about what SHOULD happen in professional development instead of complaining about what's wrong without taking a single moment to think about how it could actually work (now, there is a novel idea).

I can think of a million, but everyone else is already out to lunch.