As the push for increasing students' understanding and application of 21st century skills, teachers are discovering that they too need to be taught how to use some of the tools we are asking our students to use in our classrooms. From Voice Thread to Google Docs, technology has opened the doors for our students to communicate with us. But how do we as leaders prepare our teachers to use these tools?
Some ideas I've taken from from a recent professional development day at my high school:
• Focus: Leaders provide a clear focus for professional development and emphasize the role professional development plays in the school and district.
• Choice - Presenters, administrators, and principals stress the importance of teacher choice in professional development. Using a seminar session format, teachers are able to sign up for sessions that focused on their individual needs for professional development.
• Access: All teachers and students have access to the same tools. While not every classroom has a class set of computers, in five years they will. Prepare for access now!
• Show and Tell...and Play: provide teachers with adequate time to play with the new tools they are learning. The presenter's role switches to coach or facilitator to help the teachers apply what they've learned.
• Don't Quit: provide teachers with opportunities to continue their learning and work with the new tools they've learned. Follow up with teachers in teams, departments or staff meetings to gauge their comfort level with the new tools.
While the temptation is there to provide "sit and get" professional development in schools because there is so much information that leaders need to pass on to the staff, we must model that same behaviors we want to see in our students. The above observations were specific to my own school, but I can see that this round of professional development was a real success.
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