Six Simple Steps to Create an Engaging In-service Training Program

"That was a waste of time!" I have often muttered those or similar words to myself after sitting through a workshop. I walk in hoping that the workshop will be different from so many others, hoping that it will be engaging, informative, and practical. I usually emerge disappointed and frustrated.

That is the bad news. The worse news is that too often our teachers leave the training sessions WE conduct or arrange thinking or muttering the same thing--or worse.

After a few years of enduring fragmented training programs that are long on talk, short on practice, and with little accountability and follow-up, teachers soon learn to go through the motions of professional development. "This too shall pass" is the oft unspoken mantra. They make their appearance and then disappear with little evidence that the training changed anyone or anything. That is a waste of time, talent, and money.

It does not have to be this way. It should not be this way.

Professional development should be engaging and practical for teachers. It should also propel the school forward in achieving its core mission and strategic initiatives.

Here are six simple steps for creating an engaging and relevant professional development program.

Strategically Align Your Training Training programs should align staff values and skills with your school's strategic initiatives. For example, if one of your strategic initiatives is to enhance STEM instruction, then your in-service program needs to emphasize training in these areas. If one of your strategic initiatives is to strengthen student writing, then your in-service should focus on developing teachers' writing skills and their skills in teaching writing.

Surprisingly, aligning training with the school's strategic plan is rare. Usually, in-service training programs show little sustained connection with strategic objectives. As a result, training is disjointed with a different focus each year.

Take dead aim at your strategic objectives when planning your professional development program. Every tributary of training should flow into the strategic stream so that everything is moving in the same direction and mutually reinforcing. Your training should support your strategic plan and your strategic plan should inform your training plan.

Sustain Your Focus Old habits die hard. New skills require time and sustained practice to become new habits.

The best way to create positive change is to maintain sustained focus in your training. Focus on a few key concepts and skills over several years. Avoid the trap of annual de jour training. Serve up the same basic entree for several years but add courses to the training entree from year to year.

This one and half minute video beautifully illustrates the power of focus:

Apple WWDC 2013 Intro video dots.mov

Scaffold Your Training To maximize your ROI, professional development programs should be focused, sustained, and scaffolded.

For example, if your goal is to improve student writing, you could design a focused, multi-year, scaffolded training plan. For example:

• Year 1: Train teachers to improve their own writing skills. After all, you cannot teach well what you have not mastered.
• Year 2: Train teachers how to effectively teach writing.
• Year 3: Train teachers how to efficiently and effectively assess student writing.
• Year 4: Train teachers to help students use technology to produce and publish their writing to authentic audiences.

Clearly the training sequence above can be shortened. By combining training objectives, the above training can occur over two to three years. The point is that one week of in-service training will not produce significant improvement in the ability of teachers to teach writing, or any other skill. Unless training is sustained and scaffolded, there will be marginal impact on the quality of student writing.

This should not be a revelation. It takes years to teach students to write well. Why do we assume that we can teach teachers to become experts at teaching writing, or any other skill, in one week?

Less is More We try to cover too much. I have been guilty of packing too much training into the in-service week. While well intentioned, this is not effective. Like too many clothes stuffed into a suitcase, teachers come out of training feeling pressed and wrinkled, not crisp and sharp, ready for a new year.

An individual can only absorb so much. The central question to ask is; "what are the two or three specific behaviors I want teachers to demonstrate in the classroom from this point forward?" The answer to that question should determine the scope of training. Discard or delay everything else.

Do an excellent job on a few things rather than a mediocre one of on many. Do not seek to cover topics, seek to master two or three.

Hands-on Lectures play an important role in training but lectures seldom change professional practice. Consider the following diagram:

Reflect on the diagram for a movement. If the majority of your training is lecture-based then the majority of your training is lost, it is not affecting classroom practice.

Practice changes practice. There is a place for lecture, e.g., providing important background knowledge or explaining the rationale for the training but only hands-on-practice will change how teachers teach. Accordingly, the dominate form of training should the practice of new skills and concepts.

The best illustration I can give is technology training because we have all experienced bad technology training. The typical training involves a group assembled in front of a computer instructor. He or she demonstrates on the screen how to do "x." We watch, take notes, and perhaps fiddle with our computers. But, if we do not quickly start practicing what we have been taught we will forget. Remember, there is a difference between being taught and learning. Practice produces learning.

If, on the other hand, a short presentation of a technique is shown and ample time is provided for practicing the new skill, then we begin to understand and use it. The more time we have to practice the more likely we are to incorporate the skill into our work.

Here is a good rule of thumb; a ratio of 1:3 should be used for training. For each hour of training 15 minutes should be lecture or demonstration and the remaining 45 minutes for hands-on work. Doesn't this sound like good classroom teaching? If this is good classroom teaching it is good professional development.

Add Accountability

The adage, "what gets measured gets done" applies to teacher training. Because change is hard we need help and accountability. It is seldom enough to provide the rationale for change or even to practice new skills. If there is no consistent and transparent accountability for implementing new concepts and skills in the classroom there will be little change.

It is easy to make accountability a part of your professional development program. Revise your teacher evaluation instrument to include an assessment of the training provided. For example, if you provide training on techniques for teaching writing skills, add those techniques to the evaluation instrument so that they are assessed as part of the evaluation process.

Professional development can be effective and enjoyable. But is must not be ad hoc or an annual *de jour* experience. Good professional development is strategically aligned, is focused, sustained and scaffolded over several years. It is also hands-on with high levels of accountability for applying the training.

When these six elements of professional development are consistently practiced by school leaders, teachers are more likely to emerge from training declaring, "that was helpful, I can do that!"

Google

10 Simple Strategies for Re-engaging Students

This post was written by Andrew Marcinek.  The original article can be found here.

Last week I observed a tired classroom.

My English 101 class looked bored and uninterested in the discussion we were having. I observed one student intently working on a crossword puzzle. He was engaged. Another student was sneaking a peek at her mobile device every so often and then quickly looked back in my direction. She was almost engaged. Some students were simply staring at me so intently that I assumed they had painted eyes on the exterior of their eyelids.

Quick. React. What do you do hot shot? What. Do. You. Do?

There have been many conversations about transforming classrooms and in fact just one this week on transforming the entire educational system in #edchat. Change can be overwhelming for anyone, whether you are a new teacher or if you are a year away from retirement, but what is a good pace for change in our classrooms? Do we really need to overhaul the entire system overnight or simply take a micro approach and create small, incremental steps within our own classroom?

I came home from class and watched several videos by Michael Wesch, scanned Twitter for insight, and put on some music to ease my troubled mind. Then I reacted. I did not have time to sit around and wait. These students needed me and I was not living up to my personal standards. I took those tired faces and placed them around my computer monitor and reexamined my approach to English 101. Here's what we did.

Without disrupting the progression of the classroom too much, I decided to present the class with some new expectations for the class. I added a class wiki to facilitate our new path. Here is my list of expectations:

1. Have fun! I hope that this project will make writing a paper a more engaging process. Many times, students go through the motions in pursuit of the grade while missing out on the learning. This is where I hope this project will take us in a different direction. Too many times in higher education grades are obtained and learning is left behind. This is where that routine changes. I want you to become an expert on the issue you are covering and enjoy the process of research and writing.

2. Learn beyond the walls.  Every week we enter our classroom and shut the door. There are no windows, one computer, and eight outlets. However, most of you possess devices that connect you to the outside world and to numerous contacts. Some of you are probably reading this on a mobile device. What is wrong with this picture? It is a skewed vision of what learning should be. Therefore, this project will take our class beyond the walls and windowless concrete and carry us into a world that is constantly connected and moving.

3. Expand your audience.  I read your paper. I edit your paper. I grade your paper. Yawn. While I am an objective, worthy audience, I am simply one person. Today's student has the ability to reach out to millions on a daily basis and simply ask, "Is this good?" This project will present many windows to your work and engage you in a learning community beyond the walls of the Science Center. Learning should be transparent and open. Please allow others to collaborate with you as we engage in a new learning community.

4. Collaborate. One of our best resources as learners is our ability to connect. We can connect like never before and have the opportunity to engage with others from around the world on a daily basis. If we can learn anything from the web 2.0 generation it is that the ability to share and learn from each other is limitless.

5. Deconstruct an issue transparently.  This project will open up your research and allow others to see how you are progressing. This project will model an environment of constructive criticism and intellectual discourse. There is no room for bullying or inappropriate criticism. This environment will employ transparency so that we can share and learn from each other.

6. Make many mistakes along the way.  Unlike traditional assignments where mistakes are marked wrong, this project will mark your mistakes as learning steps. I encourage you to take risks and seek out information beyond what you think may or may not be right. In this forum, being right is hardly the end goal. Rather, the pursuit of greater understanding while exercising all of your options within a moral and ethical framework.

7. Share.  What happens when you take notes within a notebook? You eventually close that notebook and put it into a bag, or drawer. Only you possess that information. This is hardly the way our world works today and hardly the way we will conduct our research for this project. By conducting research that is transparent, it will allow us to use a variety of sources and learn from each other.

8. Provide Constructive Criticism. One of the benefits of transparent learning is the ability to not only receive feedback from the instructor but to seek feedback from a much larger audience. This community we are creating will allow us to bounce ideas and critique work as we progress. While I will also take part in this critique, I urge you to consult your classmates for feedback and suggestions.

9. Eat a sandwich.  A sandwich is like a well-constructed argumentative essay. It contains many layers but is constructed in a central...Ok, I can't continue with this nonsense. Just make a sandwich and enjoy it.

10. Engage Others.  This type of work will require you to engage an audience and be a participatory learner. It is hard to sit back and coast in this format and will require each student to be an active participant in the learning process. I look forward to learning from each of you and creating a community of resources.

After I made this list, I sat back and imagined the project unfolding. What did this student learn from my English 101 class? How are they different? My learning objectives were clearly stated from the beginning, but I wanted more for them. I wanted them to go beyond reading critically, critical analysis, evaluating a writing task for purpose, audience, etc. I wanted them to not only write about this world, but also engage with it. My hope is that they understand that learning can take on various forms. The classroom is only one learning environment.

No matter the level of teaching experience we have all encountered moments where we feel disconnected from our students. This hardly means we are an awful teacher and need to forget everything we have learned and start over, but simply react. Find the best way to connect with students and realize that not all connections will suit every student.

Connections can be made through a variety of ways. The key is not to overhaul the entire system, but simply adapt and change as you progress. Set a course for learning and be prepared for rough seas. Create a practical alternative or adaptation that blends elements of what we have been doing and what we would like to do better. The connections will follow.