Reflection on My Staff Development Session

The Beloit school district sends their students home early one Wednesday of every month. The choice has been made to dedicate one afternoon to training and development for their teachers. As a student teacher I have gone to each of the monthly meetings which are organized based on the grade level each employee teaches at. Therefore, my previous experiences have been entirely with second grade teachers like myself. The meetings are taught by liaisons, teachers who have elected to spend additional hours working on curriculum development for various subject areas. As a Duffy intern I had the opportunity to attend a staff development session with a different group of teachers than I have previously, and I chose the fifth grade social studies meeting taking place at McNeel.
The session was lead by the ESL Coordinator and social studies liaison at Wright, as well as another teacher who acts as one of the two social studies liaisons for her school. The two had attended a meeting with the creator and manager of the new curriculum at Kolak, the district office. They had been instructed on what information to present, and had designed their own activities and method of presentation for their fellow teachers. The social studies curriculum was first implemented last year and a third of the staff development meetings have been dedicated to it. The other curriculum changes in math and writing, are the focus of all other development meetings. The meetings have been difficult in the past year since many teachers are responding very negatively to the new curriculum approaches. On the drive over to the development session the ESL Coordinator from Wright had told me about how hostile some of the meetings had been. Apparently the kindergarten teachers were the worst, and their meetings had been broken up into two groups with additional district members helping teachers run the meetings. Apparently, this would ensure they kept calm while they were being spoon fed the pre-planned curriculum instructions. I was lucky though, the group I was attending a session with was apparently slightly less intimidating, though they had gotten disgruntled at a few of the meetings.
The session began with the teacher on an overhead describing the theory behind the social studies program. She re-emphasized for the teachers what a concept based approach should look like, reviewed the strands the social studies program was based around, and went over suggestions for how to tie the strands into lesson plans. The teachers had been instructed to bring examples of their lessons, and at this time one of the fifth grade teachers brought up a concern she had with the information in the presentation. This merged into a discussion of her lesson, which she shared with the other teachers. They discussed the ideas she shared, many exclaiming as they went, "That's a great way of doing it," "I should try that with my kids," or "I never thought of that before." I was happy to see, but not surprised at the comparison of ideas and the excitement elicited by teachers once they began swapping stories. However, once this ended it was back to the pre-planned material we needed to cover.
We broke into groups to discuss one of the strands and link it to the historical events students would be covering in the next unit. I was placed with two teachers who taught together at another school. They were quite negative and un-enthused about the activity. After learning that I was an intern one of the teachers asked me what I thought of the staff development in Beloit. I responded that it seemed fine, and asked him what his feelings were. He was not at all hesitant with his response, "I think its the worst I've ever seen," he responded. He stated that he thought he could do a far better job. I thought this was an odd statement since all teachers were given the opportunity to act as liaisons and take part in staff training. However, he also indicated that it was the decisions made at Kolak about what content the teachers at the meetings had to cover that he was frustrated with. Apparently the basic concepts behind the social studies program have been regurgitated in development meetings repeatedly all year. The two teachers and I discussed the benefit that teachers would gain out of instead spending this time working together to create lesson plan ideas, and this is what we ended up doing.
It is remarkable to see the change that came over teachers at the meeting, including these two once discussion moved to practice instead of theory. These two listed off several of their favorite lessons they had done in the past. The conversation ended with both of them agreeing on how much fun it was to work with kids. "I just love it, even after all these years," one of them concluded. At this point the groups were instructed to come back together to discuss what we had done in our groups, and the sour attitudes and boredom returned.
The problem that I have often encountered with education policy is that their is an underlying assumption made by its creators that they need to, "teacher-proof" the system. Packaging curriculum in a way the relegates teachers to the position of mechanically carrying out orders. The new social studies program allows teachers the valuable decision making power in lesson planning, but the new standards and method of approaching the subject matter is very different from what they did before. To assist teachers with this, and ease their frustrations the material does not need to be repeated, it needs to be internalized through comparison of ideas and discussion with their colleagues. Coming up with ways to implement the new program together is the best pedagogical approach to teaching a new idea. Ironically the district is short changing these teachers by trying to make them learn through rote memorization, the exact opposite of the concept based approach and higher thinking they are telling these teachers to encourage from their students. Sadly they have yet to realize that all teachers want to learn about better ways to teach, they just want to be able to do so in a way that maintains their professionalism and dignity.

Creating defenitions

This week I have been thinking about two concepts I am using in my thesis and how I want to define them. The first is "development" and the second is, "cultural awareness". I am focusing my research on teacher development but I think when this is talked about the term commonly draws to mind the sort of staff development meetings that the Beloit school district creates half days for once a month. But according to my research this sort of prescribed development at a district wide level, which has been created and handed down to teachers from Kolak is the least successful approach when it comes to development. I am trying to ensure that my research embodies considerations at both the macro- and micro- levels of teacher development. Not trying to down-play the importance of these meetings, however, I want to make sure to appreciate that development includes, interactions with colleagues, reading education magazines, and meetings among fellow teachers at a school. Development can also be done at a school wide level through actions taken by the principal. The sort of development I want to focus on is also genuine, self-motivated development that teachers are open to and will experiment with in their own classrooms.
One important thing I have come across in my reading is the necessity for teachers to engage with each other continually after they have been introduced to new methods. Looking at some of the schools I have been in, isolation between teachers where they are not consistently involved in positive discussion of methods to evaluate and improve daily classroom practices is a problem.The greatest amount of teacher frustration seems to come from feeling alone in the classroom with ineffective methods to teach your students. So when I discuss issues of development in my paper I am trying to be clear on the depth and diversity of methods this topic entails.

The second focus of my research that I am just beginning to focus research on is, "cultural awareness." I am not sure if this is really the term I want to use for this, but what I am trying to convey is the fact that recently I think there has been a new focus on the, "culture of poverty," and how this inhibits a student cognitively and socially in a school. I think that there is a lack of training and development for teachers that focuses on this, and it may be one of the reasons for high attrition rates in high poverty urban schools. I am currently having trouble finding as many articles as I would like to on this topic though, it seems that a lot of the work done on it is within the past few years and it is not available on JSTOR so I have to use inter-library loan for it.

Collegiality and professionalism is best

I have been thinking about what types of teacher development I want to focus on. It seems that there is an ongoing push for greater staff development. Title I schools are required to demonstrate staff development and are even given money to attend conferences and other programs. However, I think the real problem with teacher motivation and development is not access to strategies but ways of sharing and discussing strategies with trusted peers. It seems like the teachers who struggle the most are those who are most isolated in their classroom. The greater the informal talk and sense of collegiality among a staff is the better. However, informal interactions among teachers must also incorporate strategizing, not just comparing notes about the weekend. It seems teachers benefit the most when they can compare strategies regarding teaching of the same topics or subjects- which is why grade group meetings seem important. The other way is through direct observation of other teachers. With a busy schedule it does not seem that sitting in the back of another teachers class to pick up tips is the top thing on a teacher to-do list. But I think in schools where allowing time for this, and encouraging teachers to share resources and ideas is one of the key things to creating an environment for genuine teacher development.
I also think schools can make access to literature and resources greater so that teachers know how to seek out ideas and improve their strategy through academic texts. Both this and the importance of collegiality are backed up by all the reading I have come across. It is interesting to see the way these play out at Wright Elementary, where I am doing my Duffy internship. Their staff library is incredibly organized with a system for checking out books, and it is very easy to find things. Similarly all the books and classroom resources that the school just got for the new social studies curriculum are shared among grades and are neatly organized and easily accessible in the library. In comparison when I was at Todd I had to hunt through bookshelves and non of the teachers seemed to know where anything was. The easy access of teacher resources and tools for development is a perfeect example of creating an 'environment that fosters development'.