A day of Professional Development...

These words, A day of Professional Development, can sometimes make us flinch or grimace. Whether you are in education, business, trade job or customer service, a day of professional development and meetings tend to be ideas and practices that we do not look forward to. I always try to look at things through a positive lens and after a day of professional development, I thought I would share my story about how the professional development we had today inspired me.

When we are talking about Professional Development (PD) let's develop what the true intention of these days are. I think a lot of PD days are designed to give us new ideas, inspire us to look at things differently or provide reassurance on what is already occurring in our classroom. Today provided me with so many AHA moments that relate to so many different educational practices.

First through discussion on re-assessment and grading practices, it reassured me the idea that all students learn at different paces and we as educators have to embrace this idea! Our goal as educators should be to help ALL students learn the content needed no matter at what pace or in what direction. Then we need to assess the students on their academic ability and not their ability to sit still and do what is told. How many of us adults learn in various ways, models, and environments? I know throughout this day of PD I was constantly up and moving and taking cues and discovering my own learning different than my co-workers. Does that mean that I did not learn or did not gain knowledge? We have to embrace students different learning abilities and styles in order to best help them explain their thinking!

This PD also inspired me to go further with my thinking and challenged my thoughts on what my classroom looks like and how I instruct in my classroom. Through small breakout sessions and large group discussions, it was very cool to see how other teachers use so many different tools to help reach their students. Again is that not the point of PD, to share and bounce ideas off of each other on what we can do differently to best help our students!

I was also able to reflect on my practices while providing self-motivation to try new things and challenge my thinking on certain topics and ideas. Now that is what I call a powerful PD! So once again I could just focus on the negatives of it is another meeting, or another initiative, but who is that helping? If you are able to take a step back and take one positive from a day of PD that can lead you to a whole new world of growth!

I will leave you with a clip from one of my favorite movies that our PD leader, Garth Larson, showed today. He asked, "How does this clip relate to education?" So I am going to ask how does this clip relate to education and or your job or your life? Their are so many parallels between Baseball and life.