The current economic crisis has served to exacerbate the weak points in
our schools. Many would argue that the professional development budget
line is one of those points, and that the budget line should be greater.
Really?
I
would like to challenge the conventional wisdom that we need inflated
professional development (hereafter PD) budgets to advance our
faculties. Perhaps a deflation of that budget is precisely what is needed to jumpstart meaningful PD in our schools.
Where
complacency has reigned for far too long, many faculty members find
themselves suddenly deficient in teaching methods and even advances in
their content areas. These deficiencies are now in the spotlight due to
an increase in parents' expectations and information-gathering.
(Welcome to the Information Age, in case you didn't get the memo that
it arrived some time ago. Parents know what good instruction is/should
be; if they don't, they can find out in the space of a single evening
of online research).
Of course, the reality is that the faculty
members in question have (probably) been deficient for some time, but
the "age of abundance" allowed them to gloss over (ignore?) such
deficiencies at the expense of pursuing personal interests rather than
the interests of the school. In other words, there was a subtle shift
in priority from the institutional to the individual, and I would argue
that much of this shift occurred in schools with decent to substantial
("abundant") PD budgets.
I realize that my thesis may be taken
as somewhat heretical in a culture where tremendous emphasis is put on
the individual. I think that it comes down to an essential question:
what is a school? The simplest answer, devoid of complex elaborations,
is that a school is a community. A community comprises individuals,
yes, but these individuals collaborate toward a common purpose.
An
English teacher may wish to study architecture, or an art teacher may
desire a degree in creative writing...but are those wishes congruent
with the school's mission and current needs? Is it meaningful PD, from
the school's perspective?
First things first: teach like no one
else, and be immersed in pedagogical research like no else, and you'll
be remembered like no one else.
There is nothing wrong with
teachers pursuing other avenues of interest (either personal or
tangentially professional), but the school should be funding first things
first. Period.
"But the costs!" you might say. "Our faculty is
very well-educated, but the feedback from parents is that they want
more current instructional methods. How can we afford to engage our
entire faculty in ever-improving instructional practices?"
In
case you haven't noticed, there is a ton of PD available in web-based
format. Web 2.0 has brought us so much, yet not enough schools are
taking advantage of what is being offered - and it's growing daily. The
need for costly travel, lodging, and high three- to four-figure
registration fees has diminished greatly; now teachers can take
webinars and distance-learning courses offered by ever more
universities.
But I caution you to think big! Think...the world!
Why not join a webinar or course in the UK, New Zealand, or Argentina?
Just take a look around; I think you'll be surprised. I've taken two
Italian courses from Italian universities (Perugia and Siena), and have
had no issues whatsoever. What's more, since I understand my own
learning style, I can determine in which courses I might find the
greatest degree of success. I know if I want to take advantage of
online tutors, etc. What is more, at the end of the day, if I really
want to sit for an exam, I can travel to a regional test site and take
a test offered by another country!
Conversely, create a PD ning
at your school, and have the teachers run it, with the appropriate
administrator as moderator. This method represents viral networking for
PD, and is free! PD would be ongoing in your social network, and not
confined entirely to PD days at your school.
In choosing an
approach to PD based on simplicity rather than abundance (of funds), we
can actually have more with less. We get back to the basics: a focus on
mission, a focus on teaching, a focus on building community. And that
re-discovered focus will launch us on a new trend upward!