Recently, CEEE, the center I work for at Rice University, hosted a group of educators from Great Britain who were interested in finding out more about the American educational system and how it works. I knew I needed to give a presentation to them in the morning, but they were all science teachers, which is not my field, so I was at a loss for a while, trying to decide on a topic.
I noticed in their bios that most of them were interested in professional development, so I settled on a presentation about the self-generated professional development system we developed at the middle school I taught at before I began working at Rice.
When my school began developing a focus on teacher professional development(in the mid-1990's), we ran into all the usual pitfalls of an organization that's trying to reinvent itself. Initially, decisions about prof dev were made from the top down (one or two people making the decisions about the training to be delivered to the teachers). Over time, in the face of much grumbling from teachers whose needs weren't being met, our prof dev sessions were generated after discussions and input from every teacher in the school. The result was that a far higher percentage of teachers felt that they were growing as a result of their prof dev sessions.
Comments (1)
Michael-
I think this is a very powerful discovery and working your presentation to your audience's interest was perfect. Keep up the good work.
Michaelann
Posted by Michaelann | May 29, 2005 10:09 AM
Posted on May 29, 2005 10:09