A Professional Failure

[Anne Beck]

I started my day off with this tweet:

Like several other schools, we honor Martin Luther King Day by giving our students a day off while teachers spend the day fulfilling Professional Development hours. I have a hard time writing the words, “Professional Development” after sitting through what my school provided as sufficient development for our profession. Instead of writing my complaints about today, I think showing a video clip I took says enough. By showing instead of writing, I won’t have to relive one of the most wasted three hours I have spent in a classroom or bore you with details of a presentation that teachers used as a time to grade papers, complete purchase orders, play Words with Friends, update Facebook statuses, and I swear at least two staff members were napping. Here is 55 seconds of the professional development that occurred today:

I can’t help but think that this time could have been put to better use. If I had the personal days to burn, I would have spent the day in my classroom watching Twitter feeds and reading Zite. I could have joined a webinar or researched new lessons and apps to use in my classroom. If it is about the funding, let teachers give presentations on what is and isn’t working in their classrooms. Have administrators create cross-curricular committees and have teachers meet and create lesson plans. This one may take some gas money, but lets take a trip as a staff and shadow an excelling school. Like our students, ENGAGE us! Make us want to be better. Provide us with tools and resources we can use and that interest us. Don’t allow us to be passive. Make us active participants. Use the day as a pep rally to fire us up and get us excited about the job we do! Help us do our jobs to the best of our ability or stop creating plans of improvement until we are given opportunities to professionally develop.