Not Your Grandmother's Professional Development

While I thrive on prepping for my first day of school and attending professional development, I am aware that not everyone shares that perspective.  For years, I have heard several of my teaching peers grumble about sitting through professional development when there is so much to do to be ready for our most important commodity:  students.

As Erin Watts and myself prepared for our back to school professional development for our teacher leaders, we wanted to make the day action packed and content relevant.  Our goal was to shatter the stereotypes of traditional professional development. It doesn't have to be boring and it doesn't have to feel like a waste of time. Our biggest question was, "How do we demonstrate we value their learning time?"  We know that everyone is busy preparing for the start of school.  We didn't want to send a message that they had better things to do. We wanted this learning to impact each step they made as soon as they entered their schools.

We spent several hours meeting, planning, and prepping for the day.  Our challenge was to cover all the information with strategies and tasks that would motivate, inspire, and energize our teacher leaders.

We knew the key would be to start the day off with team building and collaboration.  We chose ESCAPE THE CLASSROOM! Teachers had to solve a code to find out which group they were assigned.  As the clock ticked away groups worked furiously to solve the puzzle and unlock the boxes with more clues and puzzles.  

Instructional Coaches, Technology Integrations Coaches, Special Education Coaches, and Mentors working desperately to solve the ESCAPE THE CLASSROOM puzzles.

The first group to get to the KEY CHEST and escape the classroom won.  This fun and challenging activity was a great way to take the blah out of traditional sit and get professional training.  Although only one group won a prize, each group saw the entire task through and made it to the KEY CHEST! It was evident we had some growth mindsets in the room.

The first group to ESCAPE THE CLASSROOM!

All the other groups persevered until they escaped.  

Next we powered through housekeeping and management items in a timely fashion to get to the meat of our work centered on work with teachers to impact learning for students.  Our coaches were ready to focus on the goals of our fourth year of teacher leadership.  The focus of our year will be coaching with fidelity and a continued commitment to completing coaching cycles, reflection, and model teacher visits.  Resources we used to plan the day were Pete Hall, Alisa Simeral, Bruce Wellman and Cognitive Coaching.

Teacher leaders participated in a variety of activators and strategies to connect their learning with the content covered.