Sarah Oberle: Adventures in Professional Development: A Teacher's Plea
An experienced teacher and ed leadership PhD weighs in on how to meaningfully improve professional development--and what it's currently lacking
Dr. Sarah Oberle is an active and experienced elementary educator with a doctorate in educational leadership and a specialization in cognitive science. She is dedicated to translating research on how people learn into accessible, practical strategies that teachers can apply to enhance their students' success. Dr. Oberle is an active member of several educational boards and committees, where she works closely with educators and policymakers to promote evidence-informed approaches to decision-making in education. —Robert Pondiscio
If you've been teaching for even a few years, you've undoubtedly sat through a gamut of training experiences—seeing the highs, the lows, and everything in between. Like many other professions, public school educators are required to complete a certain number of professional development (PD) hours to maintain their teaching credentials. Normally that requirement is fulfilled by things like district and school meetings, in-service days, or mentoring teacher candidates. Ideally, the clock-hour requirement for maintaining licensure credentials is met during contracted (salaried) work time. But, if we fall short, there are supplemental activities that an educator may choose to complete outside of work hours. Naturally, if an educator decides to independently pursue professional development like graduate courses or participate in programs offered by the state department of education, for example, that time would likely (with permission beforehand) count towards clock hours.
In a nutshell, teachers sit through a lot of PD.
Of course we should all strive to continually improve, so professional development seems like a reasonable expectation. In fact, some states require educators to establish professional growth goals as part of their formal teacher evaluation standards. There’s no shortage of PD opportunities: staff meetings, in-service days, and mandatory yearly trainings to improve to our hearts content…and we learn happily ever after! If you just cringed, you know what’s coming. So let’s talk about the reality of PD. Teachers: I’ve got a treat for you. Because you know we can’t do anything in education without an acronym, I give you: DRAV. My discussion is framed around four of the most common gripes about PD: dignity, relevance, actionability, and value. Or, more accurately, the lack of those things.
Dignified
One word: icebreaker.
Please treat me like the professional that I am - and the professional you expect me to be in every other aspect of my work. I don’t want to lock arms to crawl through hula hoops, wheelbarrow across the floor, or spin around and find a partner. And that doesn’t make me any less compassionate or dedicated to my practice! Kindly respect my time and honor the experience and knowledge I’ve gained to perform my responsibilities successfully.
Relevant
Curious about what the newest initiatives in education were a decade ago? Check out a current PD session. We are still talking about learning styles, discovery learning, and flipped classrooms. If I had a dime for the number of grossly misused pictures of the brain I’ve seen I’d have enough to fund classroom supplies through the rest of my career. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve had to complete a “teen dating violence” training over the years - I teach primary-aged kids. How about the hours spent learning about a technology platform that’s not appropriate for your grade level? Training that’s irrelevant to your work not only reinforces the disconnect between the classroom and administration but also adds to PD skepticism.
Actionable
Motivational speakers, group heart-to-hearts, and scavenger hunts with my colleagues do not equate to improvement in my practice. Stop telling me to find my “why” or calling me a superhero. Those messages are manipulative and perpetuate a culture of condescension. Help me learn about content knowledge or pedagogical strategies that I can apply when I leave the session. And, if the training happens to be cumulative, at the very least tell me when and how I will see the benefits of knowledge gained.
Valuable
PD should be time well spent, not squandered on busy work. Just as we are expected to align our work to clear objectives, PD should be planned with intention. Let’s move away from finding PD to fill a schedule. Start with a problem and use PD time to address it. Sometimes that might be training on a new curriculum, paradigm shifts (think science of reading), behavior management, logistics, or any number of other needs. One of the best meetings I attended was an impromptu training by an in-house autism teacher who spelled out some basics that we desperately needed as an inclusive school. The bottom line is, time is of the essence, and we have a never-ending list of tasks. Please use our time wisely.
In all fairness, sometimes red tape prevails even despite our leaders’ best efforts. Not every PD session will be career-changing. I think we can all accept that. But, I’d like to believe we can disrupt some of the persistent patterns of PD that have unfortunately become mainstays of the education landscape. It doesn’t have to be this way - at the very least it shouldn’t be the norm. What if our instructional time was thoughtfully maximized--just as we are expected to do in our own classrooms? What is our learning time worth?
To my fellow educators, you deserve professional development opportunities that are dignified, relevant, actionable, and valuable. I encourage you to share your preferences with any local leaders or facilitators who might listen.
Neal Conan, host of NPR's Talk of the Nation for 11 years, summed it up like this:
"Tell me what's important, and don't waste my time with stupid stuff.""
Appreciate this post and the new acronym :). One thing I spend a lot of time thinking about is WHO should be leading most PD...I always end up come back to teachers not only they are the most effective messengers for other teachers, but also because they have actual experience doing the thing in the classroom, which is presumably the goal of all of this.
I've been experimenting with a "Teachers Teach Teachers" model this winter, where we convene a one hour Zoom meeting around a particular literacy topic (led by a teacher or two), watch instructional clips from the classrooms, and discuss and answer questions. There's still a lot of work to be done here in refining the model, but would be curious for your or Sarah's thoughts?
Wrote about it here: https://open.substack.com/pub/scienceofreadingclassroom/p/teachers-teach-teachers-our-approach?r=1fbdh5&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web