(This is a narrative that describes the value of self-directed, home-grown professional development and is a companion piece to the one that follows)
What was your best, most memorable, professional development experience? Hopefully, you’ve had so many you’d have a hard time choosing just one; you might even have to make a list. Here are a few of my favourite experiences.
While I was still a student-teacher, the school where I was interning had a PD day. The small staff met with a local consultant, focusing on the writing process. Throughout the course of the day, the woman, guided us through an uncomplicated, straight forward approach to teaching the elements of clear, organized, effective paragraph writing. We practiced the strategies as she demonstrated to us that the particular method could work with students at kindergarten level, in an oral fashion, up to an adult - CEO - level of written communication. Since that time I have been able to teach this concept to a wide range of students, every year, often seeing the results appearing in one form or another on the students’ annual Highest Level of Achievement Testing (HLAT) writing tests.
Not that long after, at the beginning of my career, as a music teacher, I attended the annual Karl Orff workshops lead by a local teacher and music consultant, Judy Sills. The meetings were always enjoyable and wholly practical. The musicality of the event was also inspiring and fun as I found myself in impromptu orchestras, playing simple arrangements on marimbas, xylophones and a whole host of Orff instruments with a large group of fellow teacher-musicians. Sessions began early Saturday mornings and went to long into the afternoon, and I always came away with countless ready-for-next-week lessons and concepts to engage my elementary music students for months to come.
Attending the English Language Arts Council (ELAC) conference in Jasper, Alberta, a few years back, also is high on my list of favourite PD experiences. (ELAC is a branch of the ATA Specialist Councils which provides numerous PD opportunities to Alberta teachers throughout the year). I came back from the conference with an inspired approach to literature circles. This particular strategy had been demonstrated to me by a guest presenter, a high school teacher from Edmonton. I immediately introduced the approach to my Junior High students and watched them undertake writing to each other about their novels with a new enthusiasm.
At the same conference my eyes where opened to the power of the graphic novel by a Calgary teacher who wrote in that medium. I was reminded of that experience when recently, caught in a rainstorm in downtown Vancouver, I found myself in a public library reading a graphic novel long past the time the storm had passed.
Finally, there was the year-long sabbatical when I studied the advances in distance education technologies and methodologies which led to a Masters degree in that field. Being that I was studying at a distance with Athabasca University, I was able to spend two semesters of studying and researching without ever having to leave my home. Classmates engaged in on-line conferencing with the professor and with one another and submitted their work as email attachments. I could be ‘in class” and still wearing my pajamas – now that was luxury! I think I was able to spend more time on task without the need to worry about all those incidental chores and peripheral annoyances related to face-to-face meetings. I cannot measure the numerous ways in which my understanding of pedagogy and the concept of life-long learning were expanded. My studies in the field of instructional design, development, and implementation has also enhanced and transformed my personal practice and refined my critical thinking about education.
What ties these experiences together and makes them memorable is that they have had a positive impact on me, on my teaching practice, and on my students’ learning, as well. And, I dare to say that at times, yes, they’ve been fun! They have also, most often, been personally chosen and self-directed experiences and because of that I have been highly motivated to participate and learn. Each one of the above was also a home-grown, made in Alberta, product developed by local teachers, at a local level, within a local context.
(The article which follows presents a much different approach to the ongoing development of teachers in their practice.)
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