Developing Effective Professional Learning
Professional development is a necessary part of the education profession. Teachers need to complete year PL to adapt to the constant changes in education and then transfer those skills to their students. The challenge is providing effective PL to teachers with ongoing support and time to learn. PL should be tailored to the specific needs of teachers and reflect the goals of the campus. Allowing teachers to choose their path based on their needs, own their learning to find their voice, and utilize authentic learning experiences for themselves in order to pass these strengths onto students. BLIT developed alternative professional learning for our blended learning initiative so administrators and K-5 Reading teachers can gain the necessary knowledge and actively engage in practice to then guide students with successful implementation.
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This page is dedicated to the Professional Learning Plan that my colleagues, Erika Peña, Ileana Reyna, and I created to implement Blended Learning: Personalizing the Future of Education in our school, Victor Fields Elementary. In order to create an effective Professional Learning plan, we embarked on a 3 step process. Step 1, was a call to action presentation to promote a Go & Show approach to professional learning. Step 2 was to create an outline that provided an overview of the PL sessions we will provide in order to implement our innovation plan. Lastly, Step 3 was a fully prepared PL session that will introduce our staff to blended learning. Read below to learn more about how we use the 5 Principles of Effective Professional Development to promote and implement Blended Learning at our campus.
Step 1
Promoting a Go & Show PL
Every year school districts spend millions of dollars to have teachers attend Professional Learning. These PLs are intended to foster growth and reignite learning to implement in classrooms. Unfortunately, many PLs are still deeply rooted in the "Sit and Get" approach and are tailored to individual needs but rather a one size fits all learners. My colleagues and I understand in order to effectively implement blended learning we must promote a highly engaging PL with a Go & Show approach to foster learning with ongoing, and the opportunity to see blended learning in action.
Step 2
Planning Alternative PL
Our Blended Learning Implementation Team's innovation plan Blended Learning: Personalizing the Future of Education, is moving forth into the planning phase. As we prepare to present our Professional Learning to our Administration and K-5 Reading teachers we wanted to make sure we delivered a Go & Show approach with the 5 Principles of Effective Professional Development. Our staff will be provided with ongoing support, engagement, modeling, coaching, and targeting learning that is personalized for that is geared toward our campus population. Take a moment to view our professional learning outline.
Step 3
Plan the PL
When developing our Professional Learning Plan, our objective was to create a significant learning environment for our Administration and K-5 Reading teachers, like the one we envision for our students. We understood that if we expected our teachers to invest their time in implementing a successful blended learning environment in their classrooms, our PL needed to replicate and model it.
Our PL Plan aims to deepen our teachers' knowledge of blended learning by fully submerging them in a differentiated learning environment, one that is tailored to their needs. Our learners, Administration, and K-5 Reading Teachers will actively participate in a blended learning environment that has been strategically planned.