NY Teacher ponders the age-old question: Why are professional development workshops such a waste of time? In the case of her school, she says, it’s because all the teachers are forced to attend the same weekly PD session, regardless of whether the topic applies to their subject area. (Pity the poor gym teachers.) She wonders:
What if, instead of meeting whole school in the auditorium, we had smaller more specialized PD sessions? We could team up with other schools in the district so that social studies teachers, math teachers, early elementary teachers, etc. could work separately to really focus on their teaching areas.
Makes sense to us. And it’s more or less the kind of thing that researchers and teacher-development experts have been recommending for years and years. Old habits die hard, it appears.
(NY Teacher.)
