Discussion+Group+5


 * Discussion Group 5** will place their notes here.


 * Question 1: What are some of the road blocks to professional development?**

Group Activity – What are some best practices for PD?
 * Question 2: What PD strategy worked best for you last year?**
 * Without buy in from faculty and/or expectations set by administration, difficult to get people to come
 * Need some intrinsic motivation on the part of the teachers
 * Importance of developing an atmosphere of collaboration
 * Where teachers share with each other and learn from each other
 * PD person practice “name-dropping”
 * Point someone with a question to another colleague who is doing something related
 * Learn from each other and see examples in action
 * Followed up by PD person with an open door for further help
 * Showcase what others are doing
 * Focus on early adopters first
 * Spread it from there
 * Provide specific, regular collaborative time when departments/grade levels can meet together
 * Use that time to do short PD sessions
 * Use this to intro and then provide more follow-up later
 * Kind of a captive audience for the intro portion
 * Culture of the school in regards to how teachers value their own professional learning


 * Question 3: How do we "do" PD without anyone thinking it's Professional Development?**

The New Teacher
 * Question 4: How do you target the challenging populations?**
 * Help people develop their own PLNs so that they don’t have a feeling of isolation
 * Pair people with a mentor
 * Expectation that you will have at least one collaborative goal that you work on together
 * Administrator or PD person follow-up with teachers as a check in process regularly
 * What are you doing?
 * What are you going to do next?
 * How can I help you?

The Veteran Teacher
 * Assign as faculty leader with a leadership responsibility
 * Go into other classrooms
 * Share your best practices
 * Mentor/Mentee a collaborative situation
 * Each one teach one
 * Mentor teaches mentee but mentee also expected to teach mentor something

Young Teachers:
 * Mentoring program for young teachers.
 * Got to be a way to prevent mentors where on-the-way-out teachers loose touch of upcoming teachers
 * Must build in time. Must make the dialog easy when they need it.
 * Difficult when these interactions are forced beyond contract times, especially w/ extra activities
 * Schedule on the same prep period

Teachers Near the End:
 * Must show how it makes their lives easier
 * Sit down, help setup.
 * Things such as scheduling tests, syncing calendar, assessment. Anything that must show significant value add to their lives


 * Please share any of your favorite resources.**