PD in the Most Unlikely Places

A Post on Job-Embedded Professional Development for Teachers

Hi, readers. It's Jared Heath, here, once again.

To continue our conversation on job-embedded pd for teachers, I ran across something last night that I found curious. Actually, my wife found it. Seven weeks ago, my wife gave birth to our first child--a beautiful baby boy. She is now, understandably, highly intrigued by early learning, child psychology, and what makes little boys tick. Last night, she showed me this article: Parenting Boys: What Boys Need from Moms.

from kelleyward.hubpages.com

As she read off some of the items in the article, I immediately (yes, immediately...some say I work too much) thought of you. Here's what the article offers:

• "Recognize gender differences in brain development. The male brain according to Michael Gurian, needs time to “renew, recharge, and reorient itself between tasks by moving to what Dr. Ruben Gur has called a ‘rest state’. “ Boys need moms who appreciate the uniqueness of the male brain and how boys' brains need time to “recharge” throughout the day. Sons need moms to ensure they receive brain breaks during the day where they experience nature, listen to music, read, exercise, or draw."
• "Understand his need for movement. Boys need moms to recognize their kinesthetic nature. Because boys’ brains often go into “rest states” they use movements like tapping a pencil or fidgeting to reorient.
• "Engage in active play. Charades, monopoly, art, sports, digging for worms, climbing, swinging, exploring, or collecting rocks are different activities moms can join in with their sons. Moms can connect with boys love of adventure through story-telling, books, hide and seek, or unstructured play.

Oh, trust me. I know you aren't a parent to your students. There are some needs that parents can fulfill that a teacher never could.

However, there is a great deal of information in here that sure would have made my life as a teacher MUCH more bearable. Like the pencil tapping thing, for example. Not a single professional development session, job-embedded or not, told me about that. But it makes so much sense! If I replaced "mom" with "teacher" in several places in the article, then I have a treasure trove of child psychology information that would have helped me differentiate my instruction and read my class better.

So here's my question--how can you find professional development that is differentiated and really answers my questions? What does it take to actually receive the PD that you need? And how far does "job-embedded" go?

Those are my thoughts. Now I'd like to hear yours.

Online Learning Fills Void for Early Readers

While not every teacher is embracing the increase of technology in classrooms, other teachers would say technology is making all the difference. It’s not necessarily that the programs and apps found on computers and mobile devices are “better” than the face-to-face instruction in the classroom, it’s that technology is providing a solution where there was no solution before.

First-grade classes at Public School 55 in the South Bronx in New York are experiencing a technology-based solution firsthand. Because of a remote tutoring program sponsored by JPMorgan Chase, students at P.S. 55 are receiving reading help from volunteers online. While one could argue that it’s not as good as having a volunteer present in the classroom to help with reading, online volunteers offering to help gives more help to the students than no volunteer at all.

The program was created by Seth Weinberger, a 56-year-old former technology lawyer from Evanston, Ill., and the founder of Innovations for Learning, a 19-year-old nonprofit organization that has set its sights on raising persistently low reading scores among the nation’s poorest children. The tutoring software is being tried by over 550 volunteers in 60 low-performing classrooms in Chicago, Detroit, Miami and Washington, as well as at P.S. 55, where in 2010, only 15 percent of the third graders passed the state English exam.

To learn more, read the full article here.

Are online volunteers a step in the right direction for schools who struggle receiving help with tutoring?