Friday’s Professional Development Day
I visited four schools on Friday, and enjoyed myself very much. I’m sorry only that I couldn’t visit every school.
I started the day at North, which is in a good place, having improved greatly in their growth scores and made AYP. They are working on consolidating all their good work, and I really wanted to be there to help set that stage and provide encouragement. I was sorry to leave, but I saw the teachers’ reactions at the end of the day and they looked very positive.
I went to Overland Trail. The focus there this year is effective feedback. They did something very clever just before I got there. The elective teachers taught two lessons to the other teachers, one deliberately badly, and the other with good feedback. I got there for the debrief, and was fascinated. The teachers who participated in the exercise, either as teachers or as students, were very insightful about what constitutes good feedback and what does not. It was a great start to an important focus.
I went to BHA to talk about performance and learning goals, as described in this post. I also tried to make the link to motivation, which I know is a crucial topic for teachers. That’s another school that I love spending time in. All the staff are committed to reaching out to a sometimes challenging student population, and are equally committed to their own professional development, and I love them for it.
And I finished my day at Vikan, where they were just finishing up, but I had several people talk to me about the data conversations they had in the morning.
Those of us who have been in education a long time know that what happens on any given professional development day is not as important as the momentum created and the clarity achieved. The quality of the conversations carry a school forward for many weeks to come. People remember how they felt about those things more than they remember the agenda and the content. I was impressed by the feeling in the buildings on Friday, and I know that that bodes well for us. I thank all those responsible–leaders and participants–for creating a positive, forward-looking experience in their buildings on Friday. It is more important than you know.
