Friday, July 9, 2010
Professional Development Where Are You?
Barbara Wasik wrote, What Teachers Can Do To Promote Preschoolers’ Vocabulary Development: Strategies From an Effective Language and Literacy Professional Development Coaching Model which appeared in The Reading Teacher in 2010. The article was written to inform readers that vocabulary development is a critical aspect of preschoolers’ learning experiences, given the important role that it plays in learning to read. However, I also took away from the article the critical need for teachers to be given the opportunity to attend professional development sessions that assist teachers in strategies and provide them time to absorb the information before being expected to deliver, no matter what the subject area may be. Wasik stressed the importance of teachers needing to learn skills and strategies that are essential in using to successfully teach young children new words and develop oral language. The issue of more training and additional professional development sessions have come up a lot lately, especially the need for teachers to have easier access to receiving such vital support. The ExCELL Program is a comprehensive professional development model designed to train teachers to implement effective language and literacy strategies and practices in their classrooms to promote the development of children’s language, vocabulary, and preliteracy skills. Wasik wrote in great detail about the program and the successes it has had. The program provides teachers first with intensive and ongoing group staff development training. Then, teachers receive individual guidance on ways to integrate the content into an engaging instructional day for students. This program sounds incredibly supportive as most times after I leave professional development trainings I get back to my classroom and forget how the instructor advise we implement a certain element and feel as though I am not using the training to its fullest potential. Having an “expert” come into the classroom to observe me actually deliver the particular strategy and then receive feedback on it sounds extremely supportive. The ExCELL program is just one example of a successful program available for teachers and it includes a focus on the five areas of language and literacy.
2 comments:
Hey Allison, so true how professional development is critical along with time needed to absorb the new information and to implement it into our classroom. In addition to the PD, ongoing professional development in that area along with having an "expert" observe me actually delivering the strategy will ensure proper use of the strategy and longevity of the learned practice. In an article titled "The Evolution of a Teacher" by Dr. Littleton, he stated that we must understand that excellence is a "becoming" process. We are all on that process of "becoming" excellent, metamorphosizing to being a better teacher, whether you have been teaching one year or 20 years. Children do not change but new educational research and, as a result, philosophies are continuously enlightening us on the child's brain and learning processes. Likewise, they are always discovering more ways to reach children. Continued professional development with the support you described above is the only way to continue our process of evolving to excellence.
Professional development is the one major way for teachers to keep current. It allows us to continue to evolve and adapt in our classrooms so that we can better serve our students. With technology and continual research we are learning more and more about education and how to be effective teachers. It is far too often that we are involved in professional development and learn something new that we are excited to implement, but then we find that when we get back to our own classroom we do not know how to implement it properly, we lack time to plan and prepare, or worse yet we are given strict guidelines in our day to day subject matter and lessons and these new things do not quite fit into our school's established programs.
Recently I read an acticle that focused on giving teachers mentoring or peer coaching to improve classroom differentiation. This is a similar model to the ExCell Program you mentioned above because the professional development does not stop when the training stops, it continues into your classroom to help you fully implement your newly acquired literacy strategies. Mentoring and peer coaching was implemented by Project CLUE (Clustering Learners Unlocks Equity) in this article I read. Their focus was differentiating specifically for G.T. students because they have discovered that these students were not being serviced in 84% of the classrooms because the teacher's focus goes elsewhere. This model explains that teachers need a continued mentor to discuss ideas, strategies, and differentiation techniques. The mentors were supposed to be nonevaluative in nature, meaning that they were to objectively observe and give feedback for the betterment of the teacher, not to report findings on the teacher's abilities. The mentors were to assist in creating lessons and activities as well as teach and model appropriate lessons from time to time.
They found this teacher/mentor relationship to work only in the situations where the teacher and mentor developed an open and comfortable environment and evolved as co-workers. The teachers and mentors that did not create a good rapport created a situation where the teacher was reluctant to allow the mentor in the classroom because the teacher felt judged and it did not feel like a team effort. Another factor that greatly effected the program was if the administration was not entirely on board with the mentoring program. Administrators control outside meetings and this hindered their free time to work with the mentors on planning. Also the teachers felt that these new plans did not always fit in their classroom schedule because of what they were required to teach and this caused the teachers to feel stiffled.
It is important for teachers and administrators alike to realized that we are to design a curriculum around our student so that we are meeting their individual needs. Every student is not the same and sometimes these programs that we use treat our students as though they are all one person. Also the professional develop of teachers is critical to the success of our students and giving a teacher the proper guidance to instruct them would greatly increase our effectiveness as teachers.
Latz, A.O., Speirs Neumeister, K.L., Adams, C.M., & Pierce, R.L. (2009). Peer coaching to improve classroom differentiation: Perspectives from Project CLUE. Roeper Review. 31(1), 27+.
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