Comments on: Why is staff development so bad?

By: Making Professional Development Work- News Robot

Making Professional Development Work- News Robot — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 16:31:29 +0000

[...] year, Dr. Scott McLeod published a post on his blog, Dangerously Irrelevant, Why is Staff Development So Bad? At the time, I was just starting a new position as a staff development facilitator for the Central [...]

By: Dan Storchan

Dan Storchan — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 17:39:44 +0000

Scott — you definitely raise some interesting and valid points. In recent years I have moved towards a theme based professional development approach. It used to be that I would design a workshop around a tool — “Come and learn Power Point”. Today it is about the concept and then I plug in the tools along the way — “Come for a 3-part series to turn your classroom into a Global Production Zone.”

One of the most innovative models of staff development I have come across in years is the Learning at Night series, developed by a fearless group of educators out of the North Vancouver School District.

Here is a link to a video documenting their unique process of bringing teachers together for “LAN Parties”.
http://bit.ly/gu6OoQ

By: Alfred Thompson

Alfred Thompson — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 05:00:00 +0000

Doing good staff development takes work. That means that someone, usually an administrator, has to take time away from other things they have to do. Training teachers seldom gets the priority that other things get. Things like keeping the PTA happy, or making sure a fight doesn’t break out after the basketball game, or any of 100 other things.
Of course teachers need some training for certification if nothing else. So these boring and mostly useless events are set up so everyone can check the right boxes and send in the right paper work for re-certification.
I find that the best teachers often go outside, often on their own money, to get real training.

By: Jim Walker

Jim Walker — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 05:00:00 +0000

We are creatures of habit. We teach the way we were taught. I am happy to report that our new exc. director is not a creature of habit and has started a Professional Learning Community. She has asked me to teach 4 one hour workshops on wikis. The workshops have 2 groups of 12 teachers, so that each teacher will have a wiki with content linked to all the other wikis in the school. It is a start.

By: a. woody delauder

a. woody delauder — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 05:00:00 +0000

Staff development is treated in the same fashion as teaching students in most classrooms. Most teachers don’t complain because they just zone out during these trainings. They use this time as time to not do any work for their profession. It is actually very sad when you hear teachers talk about how they are going to take a personal leave day on the day of staff development. This would not be the case if the administration understood how learning happens. Passion is missing in the education system. It seems as though everyone is just going through the motions, rolling with the punches, picking their battles, and waiting for someone else to fix the problem.

By: Doug Johnson

Doug Johnson — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 05:00:00 +0000

Hi Scott,

While I am not sure any ONE thing is always best practice, including PLCs, we stay the course because:

1. It’s how we’ve always done it.
2. It’s cheap (especially regarding time spent.)
3. It results in “safe” change if any at all.

You may as well ask why we still run schools on an agrarian calendar, make all kids spend 13 years in school, or put 25 kids in desks in a square room. See reasons above.

Doug

By: John Gross

John Gross — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 05:00:00 +0000

Complicated question Scott. I think the main reason may be the fact that SD sessions are usually one day or even part of a day. They are held because they are required by the state, thus they are “shunned” as another wasted day. Teachers are very hesitant to try something new and thus they wish to stay with what has worked before. (maybe) Topics chosen for staff development are many times unrelated to anything the teachers, or a large group of teachers either can’t or refuse to use. Instead of developing a many faceted SD Day and giving choices as to where faculty can go, we tend to “forcefeed” things that are boring and as I said above, of no, or very little use.

Something that has always sort of amused me is the hiring of “experts” to do SD training instead of using district staff members to share what they do effectively. Most districts have many innovative educators who would really enjoy sharing what they do well and assisting, in small groups, their friends and fellow teachers to do something different. Here’s an example, our local district has an art teacher who is very talented with technology, especially Photoshop and all its add-ons. Why not use him to train those who might be interested in using it.

My point is to ask him/her to share with a group of peers what works well for them. I’ve rambled enough, there are more reasons/suggestions to be shared. I also agree with Doug Johnson’s post above. He has broken it down very well too.

By: Heather

Heather — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 05:00:00 +0000

Scott.

I think your comment about the lack of follow-up is important. We’ve all been to conferences and workshops where, if we’re lucky, we leave with a handout. There is nothing to take with us other than some notes we may have jotted down.

I gave a workshop recently and used a wiki. I gave the participants a hand out with some information, but it also included links to that wiki (which I continue to add to) and other online resources.

We need to be giving them something to continue to access if we expect them to use what we’ve talked about. This could be via a wiki, a discussion board, or other such tools.

True, many won’t ever use these, but we should provide the opportunity to those who want to.

By: Jeff Miller

Jeff Miller — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 05:00:00 +0000

I deliver professional development and have been a professor for about ten years. I concur with many points but there are some critical issues;
1. “One-shot” training isn’t very effective as people usually return to old habits pretty quickly.
2. It would be great for districts to use people from within but they can’t be paid from their own budgets normally because of nepotism. Bringing people in that read and study and observe in specific areas is important.
3. The building of relationships is essential. I ALWAYS tell schools that it is worth their money to extend beyond professional development and get assistance with implementation. This doesn’t matter if it is a skill implementation or knowledge/paradigmatic shift. People need help.

The one area that has frustrated me as a consultant is that there is little to no funding to provide executive coaching services to principals. If a principal needs help, they often can’t speak up or they are admitting weakness. Education seems to be filled with many odd nuances where people that ask for help moreoften get suspicious eyes following them rather than support.

The most successful trainings I have done model good teaching…provide basic information and have the participants do the work. I can facilitate and lead discussions and the work is generated internally.

By: ken

ken — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 05:00:00 +0000

Change is uncomfortable.

That’s it.

We don’t live in a sustained, on-going environment.

We break it, we buy another. We don’t like it, we return it. When bored, we upgrade our cable package for $9.99 more a month.

We Tivo. We DVR. We consume and delete.

Why should we expect our PD to look any different?