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Friday, January 15, 2010

Teaching Teachers

Happy Friday everyone. I hope you had a great week. Here is a quick story with a suggestion afterwards.

A friend stopped by the computer lab today to watch me work with my class as they finished an essay and prepared to use turnitin.com to submit thei work. As I walked through the different aspects of the paper, my friend silently watched from the back of the room. After I walked the kids through all of the steps, I headed to the back to see what was going on.

She said she heard me say I was going to use the website today and wanted to see me use it with the students during her off hour. Her goal for the second semester is to learn and master a new technology. She said learned more by watching a teacher use the program, than she did sitting through a 2 hour training session with 30 other teachers. She then asked if I would be willing tobwqlk her through the process and show her the "bells and whistles" later on.

As teachers, we often talk about how obvious it is that students learn better in smaller class sizes and with one on one instruction. Why should we expect anything less for teachers? If you have time, please reach out and help a fellow teacher master new technology. Helping one teacher learn, could result in helping hundreds of students down the line.

4 comments:

  1. That is an inspired suggestion! Thank you for sharing =)

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  2. Wow - I have been thinking and talking about this exact same thing lately. The schools I have been in and know of tend to think that Professional Development can only happen on a Professional Development Day.

    Unfortunately, these days tend to be administrator-driven with a one-size fits all approach. We (administrators do exactly the opposite of what we would want teachers to do with students.

    I feel that PD (learning) can happy every day for teachers and that there should be a great deal more teacher-choice in the matter. Not only is the example above you provide much more meaningful, it is much more cost-effective.

    I say to my fellow administrators forget the experts much more often and use the real experts. You know, the ones you hired and entrusted with 100 or so students each day. They will accomplish much more than someone coming in from the outside for a drive-by PD day.

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  3. Our school has initiated an embedded coaching model for just this reason. Be helpful and useful to each other and engage in professional learning one-on-one. It's the best way to teach and learn!

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  4. I wish that admin would build in time for us to observe each other this way. It is so hard to squeeze in an observation like this when you have two 30 min. planning periods in a day!

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