Job-Embedded PD: To Sleep, or Not to Sleep...

Deia Sanders is a particularly dedicated master teacher and instructional coach. She supports teachers and students at a rural, Title I school in Mississippi with over 90% of students living below the poverty line. 

Mrs. Sanders shares one experience that demonstrates a simple yet dramatic way that job-embedded professional development for teachers can be applied to the classroom.  

She is a mother of two girls--Nyla, 3, and Piper, 18 months.

So many times we bring in speakers and trainers, and travel far and wide to hear and receive the best professional development for our needs. Then we return from the trip, head back to our classrooms with the best intentions of implementation, but in the end we can’t find time to fit in something new, bury the materials under papers,  or fail to fully implement the full realm of training we just received… either way, we aren’t getting our money’s (and time) worth.

Mendenhall Jr. High choir receives Superior rating.

It Has to Apply to the Teacher First

The key to fully implementing professional development trainings is follow-up. And so many times this is nearly impossible simply due to the time and money invested in the initial round of training. And we know time and money are not things educators have a lot of.  Because of this, there has been a move for more schools to implement instructional coaches—a person whose goal is to train and then implement and coach side by side with a teacher on an on-going basis the strategies and best practices.  This has been an exciting and wonderful shift in our PD for both me and my staff. 

Drool Spill Clean-Up, Aisle 3...

But what job-embedded professional development for teachers look like? It changes every day and with every teacher, but here is what it looked like one day:

Earlier in the year I was working with a new teacher. We had decided to video her class and review her teaching because the students were telling her they were “bored to death.”  As I sat and watched the class, it almost appeared as if there was a carbon monoxide leak. The students’ heads were dropping one by one on their desks quickly followed by closed eyes and then the rumble of snores. The teacher asked me a question, and without even thinking I changed from coach to teacher-mode and began moving around the room and discussing the topic with the students. All of their little heads popped up and they began to discuss, share, and get excited about the lesson. As soon as I sat down and the teacher went back to lecturing and once again her audience hit the proverbial snooze.

When the teacher reviewed her lesson she was filled with excitement.  Although she was disappointed in her presentation, she was enthusiastic to see the shift in her students’ motivation when the class turned from lecture to discussion, and the simple change from standing at the front to “working the room.” We were able to pinpoint simple techniques that we could focus on to add engagement to her classroom.

PD Isn't Just About Teachers

We didn’t have to spend money or remove her from her students for a training that may or may not meet her needs. We were able to set personalized goals to meet her where she was both physically and professionally and move her step by step to the next level of performance. 

Not only is it huge for our teachers, but it’s an enormous benefit to our students as well, because we no longer have to remove their teachers to train them.  Because job-embedded PD is ongoing and catered to the individual needs of the teachers, we are seeing teachers move to more effective classrooms faster than before.  Our students are now getting lessons worth waking up for!  In an age of differentiated instruction, it’s almost amusing that it took so long to actually do that with professional development and our educators. 

I Taught ESL; They Learned Self-Confidence: A Job-Embedded PD Story

Hey there, readers. It's Jared Heath here, and I am going to talk to you about job-embedded professional development for teachers.

Job-Embedded PD for Teachers--I Had a Problem

Image courtesy of certificationmap.com

I loved teaching English as a second language. And as I've already discussed with you, my students loved it, too.

That's how, in the first few months as a teacher, I found myself delivering a professional development session at one of our training meetings. We typically had the same two coaches giving us work sheets and asking us self-answering questions that induced sleep more often than they encouraged improvement. You know the drill. If these job-embedded professional development sessions for our teachers weren't considered paid time, my attendance would have been highly questionable. Then one day I got a call from my department head asking me to teach at our next staff meeting.

Now my less-than-favorable attitude toward these PD sessions was coming back to haunt me, because I now had to teach these teachers--many of whom had been at the game much longer than me and were undoubtedly better at their jobs than I. So what do I, a green teacher full of ideas but little else, teach veteran ESL teachers that they will actually take back to their classroom? I had one wild card up my sleeve.

I Had to Take Them Out of Their Comfort Zones

Staff meetings had heretofore been filled with discussions about "the students," always referring to how "they" learn English, how "they" perceive teaching styles, etc. I had spent several years becoming conversational in French, Mandarin Chinese, and German, so I always felt more like "them" with the students than "we" with the teachers. If I had anything to teach these teachers, it was how the teachers themselves learn a second language.

How often do we as teachers forget that we are students? We have to be students. The learning process never ends, and we (should) always push forward in our fields. I had a very solid academic background in phonology, syntax, and lexicon of the English language, but these teachers didn't need a lecture. They needed an experience.

So I Taught Them Mandarin

Most of our teachers had learned a second language, typically Spanish, but it had been a long time since they had lived the excruciating experiences of translating every sentence in their heads before spitting it out in an awful accent.

I took 30 minutes and taught the teachers to count to 10, introduce themselves, ask for directions to the bathroom, write a few Chinese characters, and more. We had so much fun, and the teachers were amazed at what they were able to pick up and retain. These teachers remembered what it was like to be the students again--and in the process, I demonstrated some of my strategies for helping students feel comfortable in the very awkward setting of trying something new.

The next 15 minutes, we discussed the mechanics of the lesson--the kind of questions the audience had, the explanations I gave that helped them see things a little differently, and the strategies that didn't work in that setting or maybe wouldn't work for one of their classrooms.

In that setting, we became the classroom example. But we could never imitate every classroom setting, and we certainly had more questions than an 45-minute session twice a month could answer. We needed something on-demand to carry us through.

I Taught ESL. They Learned Self-Confidence.

I realized that the same self-confidence that I wanted my students to gain was exactly what my co-workers needed in a job-embedded professional development session for teachers. Sometimes we need to be reminded that we can do hard things. Successful PD sessions aren't sessions that teach us lock-step drills for grammar, history, math, or science instruction. We as teachers are trying to change a student's way of thinking about the world and about themselves, and we can't do that until we learn to change our own perspective. Sometimes we forget that this is the most important lesson of all.

March, Frameworks, and Videos

Hi, everyone! It's Jared Heath--the man behind the scenes, as it were. I wanted to let you know about a few changes going on. Let's start with the free conference registration:

Free SIIS 2012 Registration

Our guest bloggers for the month of March will receive free registration for SIIS 2012. No catches. No gimmicks. You get registration to the summit worth $395 for only a few thoughts--when was the last time someone paid you that much for a few hundred words?

The theme is "Job-Embedded Professional Development for Teachers--How to Apply PD to the Classroom." Maybe you have found simple methods of driving a concept home, or you have re-engineered your classroom. Perhaps you have your own form of PD that works particularly well for you. Whatever you're doing, tell us about it in a blog post! You can email me your post at jared.heath@schoolimprovement.com.

Job-Embedded Professional Development for Teachers

Starting on Monday, this blog and the Weekly Video Blog on schoolimprovement.com will begin focusing on the theme ""Job-Embedded Professional Development for Teachers--How to Apply PD to the Classroom." We want to know what you are doing in your classroom that breaks up the norm and introduces education in the most effective ways for your students.

Do you host webinars between classrooms for a joint teaching session? I always wished that I could have a joint history and science class--the Chinese dynasties are interesting, and chemical reactions were supposed to be interesting (I'm not really a science guy), but how fun would it have been to study the development of black powder in connection with Chinese warfare? Or to study math and art together as physics students explain certain principles and art students show how to mold clay on  the wheel? How about studying Jane Eyre in conjunction with health sciences and the spread of tuberculosis or the study of psychology and mental health?

So what's working for you? What's not? Let's talk about it right here.

Free Monthly Webinar

On March 22, School Improvement Network will host a webinar by  Learning 360 Framework trainers that talks about building structure around your professional development! Whether your district uses a framework, needs a framework, or employs other methods of professional development, this webinar will help you refine the training process and structure learning for both students and teachers.

Free PD 360 Videos

Don't forget to check the Weekly Video Blog every Monday! You can watch videos straight from the PD 360 library for free. Check out past videos that are there for your viewing pleasure. It's a small sampling of what PD 360 has to offer, and we want to help in any way we can.

Monday is the day--I look forward to what this month has to offer!

What Movie Making and Classroom Management Have in Common

Every day, articles are posted on the Internet discussing, highlighting, and mentioning the necessity of implementing technology in the classroom. While most of the articles you read will be about using video games to help with math, or creating class blogs to assist students develop their English skills, this week, I read an article that demonstrated using technology in a completely different way.

Recently, the words “classroom management” took on a whole new meaning as an educator used today’s technology to initiate a creative approach to classroom clean-up. We’ve all experienced trying to get students to do things they don’t want to do, but never have I heard of a solution like the following.

As Todd Nelson explains, “Nothing cleans quite like a little QuickTime movie starring fifth and sixth graders.” Todd approached the task of cleaning the classroom as an opportunity for movie making. His idea hadn’t been planned out, put together, or even carefully thought through, but spontaneity can foster brilliant ideas.

“The film genre was born quite by accident. It was a slow clean-up day on aisle two, and I really wasn’t thinking beyond an amusing ploy when I said, ‘Why don’t we make a movie of clean-up time?’ The result: Instant dharma. Lights, action, camera, whirling dervishes…clean. Chore turns to limelight,” described Nelson.

So where did the inspiration begin? Nelson realized that, “this is the generation for whom there has always been MTV, for whom “music” and “video” have always been inseparable, for whom there is a sound- and video-track for everything. You almost get the feeling that for something to be real and valid, it has to have been recorded. We are all celebrities of our own digital record keeping; all paparazzi of same.”

Nelson’s method may raise questions about what really motivates students to action, or if video making has just become a teacher’s favorite classroom management tool, but it’s probably too early to tell. For now, as Nelson so quaintly puts it, “It’s all good. Whatever gets the crayons off the floor without nagging.”

To learn more about Todd Nelson's movie-making clean up, click here.

Boys Will Be Boys: Thinking Differently About How to Educate Boys in Grade School

Katheryn Rivas, a writer from our friends at online universities blog, submitted this post on early childhood behavior. These classroom management strategies help us understand and work with elementary boys of all ages. I hope you enjoy!

Boys will be boys. So the saying goes — and yet, so many boys in schools all around the country are being punished for being just that: boys. Aggressive, physical, and energetic behavior in school-aged boys has long been a hotly contested topic among child psychologists, teachers, and academics. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, boys

• are 30% more likely than girls to fail or drop out of the education system
• are up to five times more likely than girls to be diagnosed with ADHD
• under-perform against girls in academics, all the way to graduate school

Schools today increasingly mete out strict consequences for unruly, distractible, and impulsive boys, but are they responding to boys with counter-productive methods? Developmentally, boys are not as mature in grade school as girls, especially in verbal and fine motor capacities. The elementary classroom curriculum is sometimes at least 80% language-based, which puts average boys at a severe disadvantage and worse, doesn't give them the opportunity to become fluent or to practice the language in a safe environment before they are frustrated by expectations that are too high.

Furthermore, with many schools paring down or in some cases completely eliminating recess periods, boys — who learn more quickly by physically playing and socializing — are stifled and stunted by being constricted to the classroom. Joseph Tobin, PhD, a professor of early childhood education, remarks, "The most tiring thing you can ask a boy to do is sit down. It's appropriate to expect for kids to sit still for part of the day, but not all of the day."

The combination of boys' naturally defiant rambunctiousness and schools' intolerance of such behavior often worsens the tendency boys have to act out. Stricter punishments lead to louder resistance. The cycle is unlikely to end unless teachers are prepared to modify their strategies to accommodate their boy students. Here are some ways to compensate for a boy's playfulness and assertiveness in the classroom to both help foster a healthy and positive relationship with learning as well as handle their behavior without snuffing out their spirit:

1. Encourage play. Include as much physical activity for boys as you can in your curriculum, both indoors and out. Children learn by playing, and will expend energy that will otherwise go to aggressiveness or unruliness.
2. Tailor lessons to boys' needs. Balance out your lesson plans with activities that will appeal to boys, such as building things, to keep them engaged and to optimize their learning. Touching, moving, climbing—anything that involves use of their bodies and is "hands-on" will help them learn more effectively.
3. Let them choose reading material. So often schools want students to read material that is not only uninteresting, but that actively bores them. Of course, school shouldn't always cater to the wants of the students, but they (especially boys) will be much more motivated to read independently if they are able to read or write about things that interest them.

Remembering that boys and girls develop differently is a critical part of knowing how to best educate them. Sometimes bad behavior in the classroom is not the result of an overly energetic boy, but an education system that doesn't support a boy's natural growth and tries to shape boys into something other than what they are: boys.

About the Author

This guest post is contributed by Katheryn Rivas, who writes for online universities blog. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: katherynrivas87@gmail.com.

Classroom Management: The Law of Least Intervention

This week's free PD 360 video is called "The Law of Least Intervention," and I think you'll find it fascinating.

Sometimes it's tough not to react.

Sometimes it's very difficult not to make an example of some kids.

But that's what they want, isn't it? A lesson that I have had to learn in various teaching capacities is that when a student acts out, it is very often because they want attention. So what do I do? In my mind, I correct the problem. But to the student, they get the attention they were looking for. Perhaps it's not positive attention, but if they are willing to misbehave, then they are probably past the point of only seeking positive interaction. So when I react (read: over-react) to classroom behavior problems, these students have achieved their goal. It's not surprising, then, that I have faced classroom behavior problems in the past.

That being said, we still need to address the problem. Sometimes ignoring the student or not adequately addressing his or her issues only leads to more dramatic misbehavior. So how do you strike the right balance?

There is no universal cure for every student's classroom behavior problems, but there are some principals we can follow. I hope you enjoy Classroom Management: The Law of Least Intervention.

Managing Behavior with Trust: An Assistant Principal Weighs In

Here's a 3-step process and one highly successful assistant principal's experience in helping students resolve their own behavior issues. Curtis Nightingale, assistant principal at Pratt High School in Pratt, Kansas, returns to the School Improvement blog to weigh in on issues faced by administrators and teachers alike. 

I believe the key to handling discipline, i.e. “classroom management,” is all about people skills. Conflict will happen—that is something we cannot control. But how we approach that conflict—that, we can control. Refusing to take it personal and making your students your allies rather than your opponents is the place to start.

Moment Management

photo courtesy of www.bannockcounty.us

If you will approach difficult moments (those moments where you as an educator feel challenged by a student) in very much the same way you approach teachable moments (when things don’t go as planned, yet a good educator will find a way to make even that event a learning experience) you can begin to see them more as a positive challenge rather than a negative one.

Helping them to break down the conflict in terms they can understand and the ability to see the other side is key to moment management. Many teachers do this through norm setting exercises, tribal councils, etc. The principle is the same. Helping them to recognize the roles in the room--the staff’s and theirs--can help them better understand the conflict. In other words, basic citizenship.

Building Relationships on Trust

I will admit, I rarely had discipline issues in my class. In fact, I am not sure I ever sent a student to the office—short of a fight in the hallway, of course. Now, that may be due to the fact that at 6’2” and 245 pounds I had a “calming effect” on my students, but I like to believe it had more to do with the relationship I developed with them.

I attempted to foster a “we” atmosphere in my room. “We” were going to attack the subject at hand and “we” were going to figure it out. At times I may have pretended not to know the answers, and quite frankly there were times I did not have to pretend, but I was attempting to foster a trench mentality…us against the world, the computers, the textbook, the test…you get the idea.

Many of my potential discipline issues were solved within the first few weeks of school just through the development of an actual relationship with my students. Through our give and take they didn’t want to let me down, thus there was never an issue of disrespect, defiance, or refusal to do what I asked. Did I have kids that failed my class? Yes. Did I have kids who served detentions for me? You bet. Did kids get mad at me? I am sure they did, but I also had to bar kids from eating lunch in my room with me…some of those same kids! I am a firm believer that there are days where the only positive adult contact some of our kids will have is that contact they have with us educators. Sad, yes; sobering, even more so.

How I Help Students Get Over It

As an assistant principal, I will get kids in my office for various defiance issues, and these are the steps I would follow:

1. I always ask them their side first. I validate their viewpoint and then ask them what they believe he teacher’s issues to be.
2. I may then read them the teacher’s comments and we then begin discussing the issue as if they are watching another student involved in the same situation. As we talk through it, I take away emotion, I take away personal viewpoint because of course we can’t know what a stranger is thinking or feeling. As we move through the exercise, they begin to recognize how the teacher/sub/staff member saw their behavior.
3. We then look at the policy and I quote them the worst-case scenario consequence. I ask them how they would apply this to our subject in question.

The next time I deal with this student, the exercise is much more concise, because I have built both trust and a relationship already. And I have done this with one visit of most often less than 5 – 10 minutes. As a teacher I had them for 85 minutes every other day, all year/semester long.

If handled appropriately, imagine the relationship that could be developed with that amount of time!