Sunday, February 8, 2015

Doing a lot of stuff - but is it change?

I've missed a day of writing due to having a friend over for dinner and painting all day. (who thought it was time to change colour of all the windows this summer anyway?)
Our friend is another teacher, of course, and we got talking  education, between the sevens. Along the way she said, "some schools can be doing a lot of stuff, but nothing much changes," and isn't she right on the money there!
I laughed because it's so true. You can be taking part in all manner of pd sessions at school and return to your room and pretty much just carry on in some instances. Of course, effective schools have good appraisal systems to ensure that teachers are implementing school wide approaches etc. But isn't that the problem - sometimes a teacher might only be implementing stuff to be complient. Of course, that's better than the teacher who just carries on regardless, but not a whole lot better. I can think of schools I have worked in previously where we were caught up in a number of different pd programmes and we were all very busy. Did it bring about change or is there an assumption that change will just happen as a result?
I am pretty sure that your school has some schoolwide pd happening right? Who selected this? How was the decision made? Is it something that you personally need? Will it be tailored to your needs? Are you onboard or are you going to be busy doing stuff without bringing change?

If you could choose your own pd, what would it be this year? How would you run it? What would you read, who would you see and what would you do and why? Exciting to think about?

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Is school just preparation for life?