What a difference when students are back at school! Now that the kids are back and school is in full swing, the time issue hits our group like a ton of bricks! Just as we as teachers make adjustments to our courses, I too must be reminded that I have to make adjustments for my students, ie. UTLA members, as to coursework and weekly expectations. I have modified much of my instruction to meet their needs and have included in-class readings, discussions and reflections. I have shifted much of the weekly out-of-class work to once-a-month synthesis activities. Additionally, I have added an additional monthly meeting for each site to focus on inquiry. By doing so I think that the extra hour each month will ease some of the concerns of too much additional work and give a better forum for individualized/site-based focus and conversation.
This week's class focused on "job-embedded professional development" as I introduced the major critical task for the course - School Professional Development Assessment. This assessment will be our initial data collection tool for our partnership inquiry and will be the foundation for the direction and goals of UTLA. Initially, the assignment was met with a lot of hesitation and reservations as many voiced their concern of "extra homework". However, I was able to quickly diffuse their concerns by explaining the significance of the assignment and its connection to inquiry (as well as to the fact that it is data they are already collecting).
We continued to look at Yendol-Hoppey & Dana's (2010) work, as well as introduced our Zepeda (2014) text, Job-Embedded professional development: Support, collaboration and learning in schools. With both of these texts at our disposal, we can lead our schools from the inside-out, leading to more powerful job-embedded professional growth and development coming from where it should - the needs of the teachers, not from an outside directive!
With this understanding, we concluded class with an exercise from Yendol-Hoppey & Dana (2010) which uncovered much of what professional development looks like at the UTLA members' schools. Next week, we will dig deeper into this and examine next steps! I can't wait to see what two more weeks will uncover!
This week's class focused on "job-embedded professional development" as I introduced the major critical task for the course - School Professional Development Assessment. This assessment will be our initial data collection tool for our partnership inquiry and will be the foundation for the direction and goals of UTLA. Initially, the assignment was met with a lot of hesitation and reservations as many voiced their concern of "extra homework". However, I was able to quickly diffuse their concerns by explaining the significance of the assignment and its connection to inquiry (as well as to the fact that it is data they are already collecting).
We continued to look at Yendol-Hoppey & Dana's (2010) work, as well as introduced our Zepeda (2014) text, Job-Embedded professional development: Support, collaboration and learning in schools. With both of these texts at our disposal, we can lead our schools from the inside-out, leading to more powerful job-embedded professional growth and development coming from where it should - the needs of the teachers, not from an outside directive!
With this understanding, we concluded class with an exercise from Yendol-Hoppey & Dana (2010) which uncovered much of what professional development looks like at the UTLA members' schools. Next week, we will dig deeper into this and examine next steps! I can't wait to see what two more weeks will uncover!