John Hattie in this video states that the real measure of progress is to evaluate if you have had a year’s worth of growth in a year’s learning. Even though he says this in the context of students, I am posing this to you. YOU, the most important learner, the teacher learner, the apprentice and the expert.
Michael Fullan, my favourite author on anything education says, “Every time there is change you also get deskilled (the context deskills you). You have to be humble to learn and you have to realise that you always have to be an expert and an apprentice”. If you want to hear more of this conversation click here.
So, have YOU had a year’s worth of GROWTH in the last year?
When I look back at my year in school, despite all the difficulties that the pandemic has brought, I feel it has also provided me time to reflect, introspect and prioritise what is really important. It has given me quiet moments (after very tough days of trying to balance working from home, being a parent and looking after the home) of deep reflection.
This past year, (I talk of the academic year from July 2019 to May 2020) I’ve been exposed to a range of CPD opportunities but I took advantage of the ‘work from home’ situation and in the last 10 weeks I’ve engaged in loads of learning (some at very unearthly hours because of the time difference from where webinars were being hosted). Many of these experiences have been driven by my personal and professional desire to want to learn and have been propelled by an eagerness to keep up with the latest pedagogical practices in uncertain times like these. What I would like to call, the making of history from an educational perspective. Education post this pandemic, as many have said, should never be the same again. It is our opportunity to get freedom from the obsolete, outdated practices towards freedom to “what’s really worth fighting for in education”. (Michael Fullan)
The core message I want to share today is that professional learning is not something that is done to you.
Professional development can be provided to you but professional learning has to come from within. It has transformative powers. It has the ability to cause change and to impact practice.
But, there has to be an inner driver, an intrinsic motivation to want to develop and learn. You have to take charge of developing your own expertise as a teacher. You must be able to reset that button every now and then and ask yourself, “What’s my impact?”
An organisation can send an individual to workshops, conferences, seminars, arrange need-based CPD, in-house CPD etc but if there is no impact by way of change in attitude, behaviour, knowledge or practice, then really, there has been no professional learning. What you do with that professional development, the learning you put into action, the way you move yourself forward and onward in that journey, that is crucial.
Last evening, I took some minutes to write about the many opportunities I’ve harnessed this year to learn, grow and develop my skills. I believe I have had more than a year’s worth of growth. As a teacher-educator I urge you to sit down and make a list of your year’s worth of growth. You will be surprised at how much you learn, sometimes even by default!
A conversation, a team meeting, collaborating with colleagues, a link to research, a book recommendation, a coaching conversation, a difficult conversation, reflecting on a conversation, observing a leader communicate effectively, noticing a high-quality lesson being delivered are just a few examples of ways in which you may have grown professionally.
Here is my list:
- Deepening my understanding of professional development vs professional learning
- Being part of Professional Learning Communities (PLC’s)
- Supporting School-based Action Research Projects
- Developing SOP’s (standard operating procedures) for CPD related protocols
- Deepened understanding of Assessment for Learning as a result of all the reading in prep for in house CPD
- Deepened understanding of feedback that moves learning forward
- Strategies to eliminate ‘opt outs’ and elicit response from all learners
- Learning to use the dictation app on my phone (a life changer), Microsoft teams and flip grid
- Deepened understanding of Approaches to Learning
- Culturally Responsive Teaching and the notion that implicit bias not only limits you but limits others – Zaretta Hammond’s perspective
- Listening to Chimanada Ngozi Adichie’s ‘The Danger of a single Story’
- Intercultural Competency in Education – EdX course
- Global Goals for Sustainable Development
- Collaborating with the primary and secondary student council and colleagues on our ‘Monthly sustainable challenges’
- Passion Projects
- Webinars (so many amazing ones for free!)
- Preparing and constantly updating a list of free online CPD available during COVID
- Refreshing my knowledge of writing skills with Jane Considine’s #TheWriteStuffSessions
- Engaging in Coaching cycles with colleagues while trying to use the partnership principles with a dialogical coaching approach. Close your eyes and click on Jim Knight.
- Engaging in reflecting on lessons that were co-planned and co-taught
- Learning about the different roles of a coach (Did you know there were ten?)
- The Instructional Coaching group on Facebook
- Learning more about different coaching approaches and theories
- Twitter – following some amazing educational influencers, leaders, teachers (THERE IS NO BETTER CPD)
- Middle leaders training sessions as part of in-house CPD
- Preparing for and co-leading some in-house CPD sessions with colleagues
- Presenting at an external event like FOBISIA and #GlobalBrewEdIsolation, Listen here!
- Listening to keynote speakers like Ross Morrison McGill
- Collaborating with colleagues in preparation for presenting at an international conference which got cancelled! You can’t imagine my disappointment!
- Preparing for an accreditation related team visit which got cancelled. I’d been waiting for this for years.
- Listening to empowering stories about sports people (Kara Goucher, Shalene Flanagan, Des Linden), professionals, coaches etc
- Reading magazines and journals such as ‘The Reading Teacher’, ‘Educational Leadership’
- Following blog posts e.g. Doug Lemov, Cult of pedagogy
- Reflecting on podcasts, books, webinars (yes I write my reflections on an A4 doc after each session)
- Reading colleagues’ reflections on their learning on KMS (Knowledge Management System)
- Leading Read Write Inc
Books I’ve read this year that have contributed significantly to my growth:
- Teach Like a Champion – Doug Lemov
- Start with Why – Simon Sinek
- Life is a Marathon – Matt Fitzgerald
- Embedded Formative Assessment – Dylan Wiliam
- Innovate Inside the Box – George Couros
- Culturise – Jimmy Casas
- Instructional Coaching – Jim Knight
- PLC’s Better Decisions and Greater Impact by Design – Nancy Frey, Douglas Fisher,
- Onward by Elena Aguilar
- The Sage Handbook of Intercultural Competence – Darla Deardorff
- Originals by Adam Grant
- The Coaching Cycle – Jim Knight
What’s on your list? Care to share?
I’d love to know how you have grown this year.
Sneh Wadhwaney 