Professional Development Timeline

A Professional Development Timeline

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Some Professional Development (PD) is awesome and sticks in your mind, other events might take some coaxing to find the value, but even the worst can still be team-building activities, albeit accidentally. The term is broad and takes on all manner of forms, each looking to better the participants as educators in some way shape or form. Professional Development may be face-to-face conferences, but it can also be Twitter conversations with people you will never meet. It can be learning the nuances of students’ minds and it can also be protecting them in a very real sense. Over the years, I have attended all manner of PD; this page is a timeline and explanation of the Development opportunities that I have taken (excluding the hours I received for grad school 2013-14 and those that were aimed at the ParaProfessional part of my job from 2015-17). Enjoy, and if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

2013-15

2016-17

2017-18

2018-19

13-15

EdCamp, Sears Center, Hoffman Estates, IL Oct. 2013

The second such conference I attended (the first was during student teaching, so it didn’t meet the criteria for this list), EdCamp filled a number of roles including networking and idea sharing. Consisting of dozens of 45 minute breakout sessions, EdCamp was an attendee run conference that allowed teachers of all walks of life to share best practices, debate the use of specific ideas in the classroom, and lobby for certain educational tools. Some sessions centered wholly on classroom design (were wheeled desks the best thing ever for a modular classroom or the worst thing ever?) and others allowed for creative teachers to show off innovative creations and for the rest of the attendees to probe and offer modifications to them as they saw fit. I found the content interesting, but I think the biggest thing I got out of this conference, relatively early in my teaching career, was a validation of myself as an Ed Tech community member.

Learning and Leading from Within

Feb. 13, 2015

Operated by my district’s (Il 35) superintendent, this PD was based on a mix of interpersonal skill development within the staff of the middle school and workshopping how best to manage small groups within a larger classroom setting. The district advocated a co-teaching/ associate teaching approach, so this PD really wanted to foster educator cohesion and teamwork in a singular classroom. At the time, I felt that this was occurring a little late in the year to be useful (I had a good relationship with the teachers with whom I worked), but looking back, this laid a pretty great baseline for my future work in co-taught classrooms- knowing when to take the lead and when to cede it to my fellow educators.

2016-17

16-17

Crisis Prevention Intervention Training

Sept. 2016

CPI is a mix of de-escalation and restraint training for educators that seeks to mitigate confrontation with verbal skills, but also ensures that educators are prepared and able to restrain students to prevent their hurting themselves or others. A prophylactic training, CPI was required by the district to ensure that should any problems ever arise in either in-class or one-on-one situations we would be able to deal effectively and safely with the student. I have thankfully never needed to utilize the physical aspect of this training, the verbal de-escalation skills that were covered here were easily folded into my overall classroom management skills.

Illinois Social Studies Standards Training Mar. 2017

This Professional Development was undertaken by the entire Social Studies department at my school (the provider of this training will remain nameless for obvious reasons). It was not great. Intended to grant us insight into the changes made to the standards, we never got anywhere in particular; our staff (myself included) were looking for real-world tips and ideas that we could fit onto the standards and were instead treated to a painfully rote and unhelpful recitation of the same two examples by a provider with no classroom experience. The lone up-side to this incredibly frustrating experience was that our department was able to brainstorm ideas and come together as a group in spite of the actual PD. It happens.

2017-18

17-18

ACES Training

Multiple Dates, Fall 2017

Montana, unfortunately has a very real and pronounced issue with mental health and suicide, taken as one of the first things at my current school, this training remains the most impactful one I have ever taken. Familiarizing the attendees with the concept of ACES this course provided valuable insight into the various visible and invisible ways mental health in children can be affected. This painted a painfully vivid picture of what mental health issues can do to a student in and out of the classroom. The training did not offer answers, rather it sought to contextualize the actions teachers see daily and give possible coping strategies in and out of class for both the students and the educators.

Literacy Training: Writing Short Constructed Responses

Feb. 8, 2018

My district is in the process of implementing a vertically and horizontally aligned writing curriculum; this particular instance of the training was aimed at secondary Social Studies teachers. A segmented approach, the training began with reading and annotation skills and approaches before transitioning to a number of tactics that fit within the framework we could use to move that information into notes, outlines, and eventually whole essays. Aiming any PD at all of 6th-12th grade is tricky, but this event did a good job of allowing the participants enough autonomy to contextualize the larger educational skills within their own content space. We continue to use this framework and I am quite pleased to see a shared vocabulary of writing skills in my seniors- ensuring an understanding amongst the students that is no longer contingent on them having taken exactly the same classes with the same teachers. Overall, this was very helpful from both a practical, systemic perspective as well as the technical education one.

Co-Teaching in High Schools Workshop

Apr. 19, 2018

Taken alongside my co-teacher and orchestrated by one of my vice-principals, this PD worked as both a way for co-teaching pairs to share best practices and for us to develop a set of school standards for future co-teachers. Taken over four two-hour sessions, the workshop was interesting in the immediate term and seems to have made some impact on the practices the following year with new co-teachers.

2018-19

18-19

Tweet, Teach, Learn

Monthly Sept. 2017 - May 2019

I have engaged in this program for the last two years, finding it a mix of insightful and disjointed. Participants from across the district met monthly on Twitter to engage in a structured #EdChat. When it worked well, the prompts let teachers and the occasional para-educator discuss successes, tricks, and ideas, as well as the odd failure. The chat saw increased member attrition last year and was shuttered; while I understand the reasoning behind this, I can’t help but wonder if it was due to a lack of educators in the district not wanting to analyze their teaching in a public setting (obviously, I didn’t mind and, as I used my classroom account, a number of students followed the discussions and asked me about my comments the next day which is something I was happy to do).

Active Shooter Training

Dec. 8, 2018

A grim reality of teaching in the post-Columbine world, this day-long course was unsettling and undoubtedly valuable. Taught by our local police force within a district school, we learned about proper planning, preparation, and actions that should be taken, should the impossible occur. Following a classroom session, we enacted multiple drills that involved barricading classrooms and fighting back against armed intruders. It was an intense experience, to be sure, but it is also one that my co-workers and I have been adamant about the rest of our staff taking.

Trauma Informed Classrooms

Jan.10, 2019

A follow-up of sorts to the ACES training mentioned above, TIC was taught by trained therapists from our local children’s hospital. This course covered a wide range of topics from mental development from birth to adulthood and how a myriad of factors can inhibit our students, to tried and true skills for dealing with verbal, nonverbal, and overtly physical outbursts, especially at the high school level. I found a ton of value in this course as it expanded on previous knowledge and also shined a light on seemingly erratic actions as the effects of traumatic experiences.Invaluable.

Applied Behavior Analysis

March 12, 2019

I anticipated this being a practical skills course that would build upon previous courses and let me diagnose actions in my class and find ways to help those exhibiting them. Unfortunately for me, this was more of a survey and explanation of ABA with an eye towards its implementation in pre-K and lower primary school contexts (I was one of two secondary educators in attendance). As a result of the focus, I can’t really point to anything I explicitly got out of this course, but it probably was a good refresher on the approaches my district takes towards dealing with and treating mental health issues from the start. They can’t all be winners.

Their Behavior, Our Behavior

Apr. 9, 2019

The Conflict and De-Escalation Cycle

Apr. 11, 2019

A two-part program, these PDs were robustly attended as they did a great deal with classroom management. Featuring a great deal of discussion and simulation, we were able to practice ways to interact with students undergoing all manner of mental and physical issues and how we could mitigate the interruptions or even cut them off at the pass by recognizing, acknowledging, and dealing with the students before it became any sort of issue.

Building and Instructional Framework High School

June 10, 2019

As well as the reading/ writing alignment I mention above, our district is also in the midst of implementing a universal Instructional Framework as employed by award-winning principal Mel Riddile that should not only streamline classes, but concomitantly raise student retention and understanding. One of a number of these trainings I attended over the 2019 school year (enumerating all 4 seemed redundant), this long session focused on all aspects of the program (openings, instructional time, closing), as well as dealing with school culture (meeting students at the door, cross-curricular standards of action and behavior, etc.). Though featuring some repetition, the large turnout for the day-long conference resulted in a deep discussion on all topics and input from all content areas that enabled educators to synthesize the information in a meaningful way. A great way to wrap the 2018-19 school year- looking forward to 2019-20 with a new bag of tricks.

Philadelphia Historic Museums Tour

June 22, 2019

My district is pretty great about allowing self-managed professional development; this is an example of that. As a Social Studies teacher focusing on American Government, I was able to parlay a day of visiting Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, U.S. Constitution Center, U.S. Mint, and Portrait Gallery into professional development. As I toured through one of the densest concentrations of government and history in America I collected resources and information that will be invaluable (one of which I include HERE). The most fun of all the PD experiences listed here, as I am a great lover of museums, this is also a testament to the value of flexibility in continuing education.

Critical Friends

Monthly, 2018-19 School Year

Composed of a dozen of my high school colleagues, ranging from new to deeply experienced teachers, Critical Friends is a monthly gathering wherein we gather to discuss accomplishments and challenges we have experienced. Steered by a trained leader, we engage in reflection on our personal and educational lives, offering support and advice, akin to a collegial group therapy. The learning community also engages in critical discussion of the issues of the day covering everything from the profusion of school violence, to teaching students in poverty. Professional ethics don’t allow me to get much more in depth than that, but I find this event as something to which I can look forward, not only for the social interaction, but for the deep and forthright conversations in which we engage that always leaves me feeling a more confident educator than when I entered.