What Does Bad PD Look Like?
That’s a terrible question. We all know what bad professional development is, but it continues to happen all over the world. I spent Monday and Tuesday leaning a new e-grade book and I couldn’t help thinking of the ingredients that make-up a poor experience.
1. Rushed (Having to use or re-teach material/software within a week)
2. Errors! (A training model that is poorly constructed and functions sporadicly at best)
3. The Unknown (District application is still a week away, what is it going to look like?)
4. The Presenter (Most software people don’t speak in normal everyday terms, nor do they have the the fortitude to stick with “non-techies”)
5. Local Knowledge (Teachers are partial to certain functionality in grading, the presenter should be somewhat prepared for how the audience works)
The list could go on and on. Why are teachers being trained before the tech department? Why would you show your audience the entire system in three hours? It is extremely aggravating all around. The bottom line is when things like this happen you leave people with the option of not adapting. “It didn’t work,” I didn’t get it,” “I’ll never have time to learn all that.”
I realize sometimes time is an issue, but as the old saying still goes, “poor planning on your part does not constitute and emergency on mine”. We will get it done. We have a great staff and we always mange to shine no matter what is handed to us. I just hope that in the future more voices are brought into the mix of professional development and system change. All of this could have been avoided with a short conversation.
I didn’t learn much about our new grade book, but I did learn a valuable lesson.
August 15th, 2007 at 9:48 am
Bad PD to me is too much talking and not enough hands on. We had someone come and demonstrate an computer grade book-attendance book. They ran through a 30 minute presentation showing us all the bells and buzzers, and then the principal told us all to go out there and use it. Later that day, not a single person could figure out how to even enter kids names and grades. But we got PDed.
August 15th, 2007 at 9:14 pm
I can relate, I just went through a rather painful error-filled technology PD experience myself (not through my district though).
I’d like to speak in particular about #4 in your post. I have worked with fantastic manufacturer reps but usually they have limitations because they are not actually teaching and using this stuff in the classroom. I think the extended teachers-teaching-teachers model usually works much better, and by extended I mean that it isn’t a one-shot 30 minute presentation. The techie teachers may be good to go after one session but many will require followups. And even if everyone on staff picked up how to set up their gradebooks, disaster is bound to strike the first time that grades need to be uploaded for report cards. Follow-ups are KEY!