Professional Development: A Defense

Teacher conversations about professional development often include the terms worthless and waste of time, and a general disdain for typical approaches is often evident. The back-and-forth can be a bruising arena for those who actually provide professional development, and I’ve been feeling a bit bruised recently. Don’t worry. The bruises have only been blows to my ego. (The only actual bruise I have came compliments of a concrete planter on the corner of New Jersey & M Streets in Washington, D.C., and that’s not a tale I care to retell.)

I must confess that my own experience supports such derogatory comments. I once spent an entire morning of “professional development” brainstorming alternate ways to earn a living. Though I’m sure the administration’s intent and the presenter’s goals were worthwhile, the session was so poorly designed that worthless and waste of time accurately described the result.

Why, then, do the current perspectives of professional development seem bruising? A few years ago I began an organization committed to “investing in teachers,” a “school’s most valuable asset.” And, yes, professional development is a significant component of what we do. So, allow me to provide a brief defense of professional development based on what it can do when it’s effectively designed.

Professional development can contribute to increased student learning. As we learn more about teaching and related topics, such as findings from neuro- and cognitive science, we discover principles that can improve our teaching. As our teaching becomes more effective, our students understand more. Our growth in teaching influences their depth of learning.

Many times, our growth in teaching relates to our instructional design—an element that directly influences student learning: “Many breakdowns in student learning may be a function of poor classroom curriculum design,” suggests Robert J. Marzano. “...the expert teacher has acquired a wide array of instructional strategies along with the knowledge of when these strategies might be the most useful.”¹ Professional development can equip us with additional strategies for fostering learning.

Professional development can provide a common language for teachers to talk to teachers about teaching. This increases the possibility of collaboration, a practice known to improve practice:

Surgeon and author Dr. Atul Gawande details conclusions of a Harvard Business School study on the learning curve surgeons experience when learning new surgical techniques. Practice in itself proved an unreliable predictor of learning rate and success, but how surgeons practiced made a significant difference. A surgeon leading one of the quickest-learning teams picked “team members with whom he had worked well before” and kept “them together through the first fifteen cases before allowing any new members. He had the team go through a dry run the day before the first case, then deliberately scheduled six operations in the first week, so little would be forgotten in between. He convened the team before each case to discuss it in detail and afterward to debrief.” In contrast, a surgeon who had significantly more experience led one of the slowest-learning teams. He involved different personnel in each surgery, “which is to say that it was no team at all,” and led no pre- or post-operation discussions. Increased collaboration quickened learning rate and improved performance. Most important, patients benefitted from the surgeon’s collaborative approach.²

Educational research reaches a similar conclusion: collaboration improves teacher performance. Unfortunately our learning institutions often impede professional growth by inhibiting collaboration. As a result, we can actually hinder student learning by failing to sharpen one another through collaboration.³ Common professional development can provide a basis and means for such collaboration.

Professional development can provide new research that equips teachers to be more intentional. New research often illuminates why what we already know to be successful teaching is effective. This recognition helps us become more intentional in our use of various methods and approaches. When we understand why something works, we know better how to optimize its effectiveness. A consistently good teacher is an intentional teacher, and the more we understand about teaching and learning, the more intentional we can become. Professional development can do these things, which also means it can fail to do them, and this is a source of teacher frustration and justifiably bruising comments:

Unfortunately, schools provide little help. Most professional development programs for teachers, claims Richard Paul, are “episodic, intellectually unchallenging, and fragmented” with “very little discussion on or about serious educational issues, and when there is such discussion it is often simplistic.”⁴

Those leading professional development sessions have a critical responsibility. In the next post I’ll explore some principles that should be considered when designing and leading professional development. We need effective, high quality, meaningful professional development.

Otherwise we do a disservice to hard-working professionals and deserve the bruises their opinions inflict on our egos.

References

1. Marzano, R.J., What Works in Schools: Translating Research into Action (Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2003), 106, 78.


2. Gawande, A., Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance (New York: Henry Holt, 2007), 230.


3. Sergiovanni, T.J., Moral Leadership: Getting to the Heart of School Improvement (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1992), 88.


4. Washburn, K.D., The Architecture of Learning: Designing Instruction for the Learning Brain (Pelham, AL: Clerestory Press, 2010), 191.

Image: 'Audience' http://www.flickr.com/photos/30127486@N00/267785927

A Teacher's Lessons from Writing, Part 2

My cell phone rang when we were deciding which package of paper towels to buy.

“Kevin, this is John Paine. Do you have a few moments to talk?”

I had both anticipated and dreaded this call, and the paper goods lane of Publix was not my ideal setting for the conversation. My wife, sensing it was the call I’d been waiting for, dug through her purse to find a beat-up memo pad, found a page with about an inch of clean space, and thrust it into my hands along with a pen. I think she waved as she headed for the frozen foods section.

“Um, sure Mr. Paine, this is fine.” I found some clearance between a package of paper towels and the shelf above it. Voila! an impromptu desk.

“I’ve read your manuscript in its entirety and will send you specifics, but I wanted to discuss a few general things with you by phone first.”

“Okay.” (Note the high intelligence of my response. I was a bundle of nerves.)

I found Mr. Paine, no lie, via an internet search, and I never expected him to take on my manuscript. A professional editor, he’d worked on books I recognized by authors I recognized. He’s on the speed dial of several major publishers and is called for emergencies, such as a book still needing editing on the eve of its print run. When he requested the rest of my manuscript after reading the first hundred pages, I thought it might be so he could have a non-example to share with colleagues for a few profession-related laughs.

“I think you’ve don a good job to this point,” he said. “In fact, I wish my teachers had taught this way.” Even though it was my writing he was editing, his comment on teaching caught my ear.

“Really?” I asked. (Again, note the deep intellect represented in my response.)

“Yes, I would have learned much more and it all would have seemed far more interesting and relevant.”

This was a gift. Even if he then said that the writing should never accost a reader’s eyes, I would have floated out of the paper goods aisle.

“There are some things you can do that I think will make your message even clearer,” he continued. “One thing that editors help writers do is see a manuscript from a reader’s perspective. That’s my job, so here are a few general suggestions.”

Like a good paper towel, I absorbed all I could from Mr. Paine’s comments. I won’t bore you with the details, but this conversation launched one of the greatest periods of learning I’ve experienced. I needed to step away from my investment in the project and view it from a different perspective. As I worked with Mr. Paine through the following weeks, I grew in my understanding of seeing from a reader’s perspective. I needed more examples. I needed to use fewer technical terms. I was at my best when I allowed my examples to become short stories that entertained and informed. I was at my worst when my writing failed to touch the ground, when its theory remained theory without practical applications. I needed an editor, a teacher, someone to say, “I know your intent. Here’s a better way to communicate it.”

As a teacher, I know that letting others see our work in the classroom can be intimidating. Many of us have experienced the administrator and clipboard fly-by described by Alan Sitomer, which was most likely followed by a brief discussion in the administrator’s office with the ceremonial placement of the evaluation in our personnel files. But, as I learned, there is value in having someone else redirect our perspective—not with a clipboard and brief observation. Instead, we need “editors,” coaches who come along side us and help us do what we do better, perhaps with more of the learner’s perspective in mind. We need professional relationships like those described by Derek Keenan in his excellent blog post.

Though I’ve written about coaching before, the value of such a relationship became clearer to me through my experience with a professional editor. This, I thought, is what I need in my teaching. Someone who respects my work, who sees its value, and yet sees how I could make it even better, how I could make it more effective. Someone who can guide me to see and think like my learners, not check a box or circle a number on a form. Someone who wants my work to be its best because of its potential influence, not someone who’s crossing a task off of their to-do list.

I need a professional editor for my teaching.

Image: 'Happy Buggy Wednesday' http://www.flickr.com/photos/10687935@N04/3946962619

Growing Personally and Professionally Produces Meaningful Results

A few times every year, I get to lead a professional development event known as “Writer’s Stylus.” Each time, including just last week, it proves to be an exciting experience. We begin the week thinking we already teach writing. We end the week as writers, producing an essay that has undergone multiple waves of revision. We end the week as writing teachers with a vision for developing young writers, not just students with good writing skills. We end the week as different individuals and professionals, and as a different community than when we started.

The week of training illustrates three principles that transfer to any area: personal growth aids professional growth, professional growth often requires re-evaluating long-held beliefs and practices, and when combined, personal and professional growth produce meaningful results.

Personal growth aids professional growth.
“At the beginning of the week, I would never have worded this sentence like this,” the teacher explained. “But by learning how to revise my own writing, I can see the difference structuring it this way and using the stronger verb, ambushed, makes.”

“I needed someone to tell me to make it personal—that it was okay to write in my own voice,” explained another teacher. “That turned what was a very direct and didactic essay into something that makes its points through simply relating my experience.”

For all of us, the first noticeable growth was personal. We learned how to revise our own writing. We examined texts crafted by master writers. We noticed things in good writing that we’d never seen before, and we implemented those ideas into our own drafts. We grew as writers.

Our ideas, first either overwhelming or overly sketchy, developed into clear and clever expressions of ourselves. As a group, we got to know each other through rough drafts, coaching sessions, and moving final versions of our essays. The process of writing created a community of writers.

But we also grew as teachers. Because we knew what characterized and went in to crafting good writing, we recognized the weaknesses of our instructional approaches. We began to identify skills we needed to teach our students, but teaching in new and more effective ways means letting go of less effective habits.

Professional growth often requires re-evaluating long-held beliefs and practices.
Our growth as writers changed how we examined our instruction. In looking through writers’ eyes, we recognized much of what we call writing instruction fails to teach writing at all. We have students do too much drafting and not nearly enough revising. We spend too much time having students mark up pre-printed sentences and not nearly enough time crafting original ones. And we get hung up on students forming diagrams for other people’s sentences to the point that we value a correct diagram over a well-constructed original sentence.

Our old ways of thinking argued with us. What would our teaching friends who love diagramming say if they knew we were not going to overemphasize it? If we spent more time in writing and revising, what would happen to the dozens of practice activities and worksheets our textbooks provided? Would coaching young writers as individuals mean that our classes would cover fewer uses of quotation marks than we had in years past?

We asked these questions, and often we ended up laughing at ourselves. Wait, we kept reminding each other, we’re teaching writing. To learn to write, students must write. They must revise. They most journey through the full process. No one ever expressed themselves clearly and in ways that deserve attention by diagramming or underlining preprinted sentences.

Re-evaluation told us the truth. Yet, even with our new eyes, the results astonished us.

Personal and professional growth produce meaningful results.
“I felt like I was trying to hug an elephant.” We worked all week on the essays, and what started as “hugging an elephant” ended up a piece of writing that would rival anything Erma Bombeck ever wrote. “I called my essay, ‘Lettuce. Rejoice!’” she explained. Then she read, “I relished walking the rows of my neighbor’s garden…”

Look at that. Just look at the verb choice in that first sentence! Relished! Would any other verb have brought gardening and vegetables to mind nearly as well?

Several volunteers shared their revised essays, and the quality of each one surprised and delighted us. From essays on adopting and raising children to those detailing personal mission experiences, the results were meaningful—valued, important, significant—both to the writer as an individual and to us, the community, as writers.

Growth is a beautiful and productive process. We need to seek it for ourselves, both personally and professionally, and we need to let it influence our educational practices. When we do, the results may allow us to stand back an say, “Lettuce. Rejoice!”

Who Should Coach? Three Essential Traits for Professional Development Coaches

“Who do you think should be our coach?” I get this question from administrators in schools that invite me to lead professional development events. There is an assumption that after a few days of working with teachers I’ll have a good sense of who could coach colleagues effectively. Sometimes I do, but often I don’t feel confident in making a recommendation. I’ve had teachers in these events who seemed resistant but on a return visit had become a new initiative’s supporter and best practitioner. Conversely, I’ve experienced teachers who seemed receptive and motivated during training but who resisted actually making changes to their practice. The training event is not the best setting for identifying potential coaches.

What, then, should we look for? What traits does a successful coach possess? While a lengthy list could easily be developed, let’s examine three that are critical.

First, an effective coach possesses a passion for and a deep understanding of the new initiative. Genuine passion is contagious. It acts like a magnet, drawing others to its energy, but it rarely manifests itself as a cheerleader. A quiet dedication to doing something right, to working with excellence even while learning, marks the teacher who attracts others to a new initiative. An effective coach will help colleagues see the value of new ideas through actions more than words. Does the teacher take an initiative to make changes to her practice? Does she seem concerned about getting it right, about trying out the initiative as designed? Does the teacher pursue more knowledge and better ways of implementation?

Implementing a new initiative is an act of transfer—the applying of new ideas and methods to actual classroom practice. Coaching others is a step beyond that: equipping and enabling others to be successful in their transfer of new ideas and methods to their classrooms. “The first factor that influences successful transfer is degree of mastery of the original subject,” conclude Bransford, Brown, and Cocking. “Without an adequate level of initial learning, transfer cannot be expected. This point seems obvious, but it is often overlooked…Transfer is affected by the degree to which people learn with understanding rather than merely memorize sets of facts or follow a fixed set of procedures [italics added].”1

Just attending the same training event everyone else attended does not equip someone to coach colleagues successfully. Deeper understanding must be constructed so that the coach can adapt the initiative to various teachers, various classrooms, and to best serve various students. An effective coach seeks additional learning and, if available, additional training in the new initiative.

Second, an effective coach knows how to strategically handle difficult conversations. If the training event went well and the administration has been open with teachers prior to it, difficult conversations may be few in number, but they will still happen. At some point, the coach encounters a colleague who is overwhelmed and feels stressed and defensive about making changes, or a colleague who feels threatened by the idea of having a coach in the classroom, or even a colleague who would like to be left alone to use the same approaches that have been used before. All these conversations occur in every type of school.

After explaining the importance of self-respect and respect for one’s counterpart, Holly Weeks, author of Failure to Communicate, explains how a successful coach perceives difficult conversations:

Self-respect and respect help us frame the problem between us and figure out how to talk about it. Meanwhile, respecting the landscape of a tough conversation assumes there will be problems ahead. Rather than put our heads down and start to plow through, we will do better to step back, take a satellite view, and think about the lay of the land. That is, think about the problems we are likely to encounter and look for a good path through them.2

A good coach will approach difficult conversations with such a “satellite view,” rather than a perspective of “the problem is you.” A good coach stays focused on solving problems and supporting progress, avoiding and ignoring personal attacks.

Finally, a good coach focuses on improving thinking. The goal with any major professional development initiative should not be to produce robots who follow formulas to plan teaching. The goal should be to help teachers understand what works and why it works, to deepen teacher thinking about teaching and to increase teacher intentionality. A good coach aids colleagues’ thinking, often using questions to support teacher thinking rather than short-circuiting thinking by always giving answers. Questioning helps others discover insights for themselves. David Rock, author of Quiet Leadership, explains:

…it’s time to give up second guessing what people’s brains need and become masters of helping others think for themselves. The best way to do that is by defining solutions rather than problems, and helping people identify for themselves new habits they could develop to bring those solutions closer. Pivotal to all this is the art of enabling other people to have their own insights. Once people have had new insights for themselves, our job as quiet leaders is to provide the encouragement, ongoing support and belief in people, over time, to ensure they develop the new habits that are possible. Then we will be truly bringing out the best in others.3

Certainly more contributes to successful coaching, but these three traits are where I’d begin my search, either for a coach or to determine my potential as a coach. Here are some guiding questions based on these thoughts:

• With whom does the new initiative seem to resonate? Who holds the same values as those advocated by the new approach? Who shows an authentic dedication to the new ideas?
• Who is skilled at navigating difficult conversations? Who can calm others in the midst of heated interaction? Who maintains a focus on finding solutions? Who seems capable of equipping and encouraging colleagues?
• Who is skilled at engaging others in thinking? Who asks great questions? Who can use questioning to help others think things through for themselves? Who works with colleagues to think things through rather than assigning blame or taking resistance personally?

The professional development event may be great. The presenter may be dynamic, engaging, and informative. But after the event, the real work begins. The coach plays a pivotal role and directly influences the success of a new initiative. Effective coaches know the program, know the people, and know the processes that will optimize success. When asked for my recommendations, the best advice I can offer administrators is, “Choose wisely.”

1. Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (Eds.), How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School (Washington, D. C.: National Academy Press, 1999), 41, 43.
2. Weeks, H., Failure to Communicate: How Conversations Go Wrong and What You Can Do to Right Them (Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2008), 45.
3. Rock, D., Quiet Leadership: Six Steps to Transforming Performance at Work (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), 27.

A Missing Piece of the Professional Development Puzzle

Growing up, my older brother loved jigsaw puzzles. He’d sort the pieces and bend over our card table looking for the next fit.

I only enjoyed one piece of his jigsaw puzzles—the last piece. When my brother left the room I’d sneak a piece away and hide it in my sock drawer. The puzzle would remain incomplete until I showed up and proudly placed the last piece.

We often approach professional development without all the pieces in place. We schedule a training event rather than strategizing how to support the changes we want to see in our classrooms. As a result, the training becomes a memory rather than a springboard.

A good coach can carry the professional growth from the training event into the classrooms. With coaching, a great training event becomes a launching pad for greater instructional excellence.

Why? What does a coach do that aids professional growth?

A coach activates reprocessing of new concepts and skills. Most likely, the training event featured a wealth of information. Unless the presenter intentionally planned time and activity to think through the material, many teachers left without constructing a deep understanding of new ideas. A coach engages teachers in thinking through the material and ways of using it to improve teaching.

A coach provides resources for success. Success motivates continued effort, but lacking the resources necessary to implement new strategies frustrates and defeats. A coach monitors teacher needs and works to provide the tools, materials, and support that will enable success.

A coach directs focus toward solutions. If we’re honest, we all tend to resist growth and change. It can be easy to find every reason why something will not work, and this perspective quickly defeats new initiatives. A coach can redirect thinking away from finding problems to designing solutions that enable a new initiative to progress.

A coach helps transform thinking to reality. Let’s move to the gym for a moment. Imagine a basketball coach who meets with the team once at the beginning of the season for a day-long seminar held in the school library. After that, the players are on their own to achieve excellence throughout the season. How successful would this approach be? Not very. The team needs the coach nearby to help them implement the vision and ideas on the court. (Even professional basketball teams need coaches.) Similarly, the coach in the classroom helps the teacher experience success with a new initiative.

That puzzle piece in the sock drawer drove my brother crazy. An incomplete puzzle is unsatisfying. It shows potential unrealized. Don’t let this be the description of your professional development efforts. Recognize the important role a good coach can play in supporting instructional success.

Of course, many questions remain. What traits do successful coaches share? How can a coach establish relationships that will promote optimal effectiveness? Future postings may discuss these and other related ideas.

One final note: a coach can only be helpful to the degree that a teacher welcomes the dialogue. It never feels comfortable to have a colleague observing our instruction because we think the focus is on what we’re doing wrong. A great coach will work for your success and celebrate your success. Let’s welcome such input. As we grow, our teaching improves. As our teaching improves, our students’ learning increases. And that’s a piece we all want in place.

Analytic Skills & Comprehension

After describing memory thinking as cognition that provides “something in your head to reason about,” Sternberg, Jarvin, and Grigorenko (2009) suggest analytical skills as another type of thinking (p. 19). Analytical skills involve sorting or ordering ideas into valid schemata and are “sometimes referred to as critical thinking skills” (p. 22). Verbs associated with analytical skills include compare, contrast, sequence, organize, differentiate, identify (e.g., cause/effect), classify, categorize, combine, match, divide, and graph.

Like memory thinking and experience, analytical skills overlay nicely with Architecture of Learning’s process of comprehension. During comprehension, the brain labels and organizes data; we arrange isolated facts and examine their relationships to construct knowledge.

I disagree with the idea that comprehension or “analytical skills” equal critical thinking. I see comprehension as a precursor to evaluative, critical thinking. Comprehension enables me to see how knowledge is organized. By reviewing that organization I can assess validity, but that requires a step beyond sorting the data. However, there is a strong relationship: comprehension (or “analytical skills”) empowers critical thinking.

Again, the concept of learning as a process of varied thinking is validated. Sternberg, Jarvin, and Grigorenko (2009) suggest good instruction finds “a balance to make sure that all thinking skills can be proportionally represented throughout the curriculum” (p. 22). Architecture of Learning equips teachers to design such instruction, deepening student learning and increasing student achievement.

Up next: comparing “creative skills” (p. 35) and elaboration.

Sternberg, R. J, Jarvin, L. & Grigorenko, E. L. (2009). Teaching for wisdom, intelligence,creativity, and success. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.