Thing 13 – K-12 Online Conference

I just attended a professional conference as I had a little free time throughout my school day. Since I do professional development for teachers, I was very interested to hear Konrad Glogowski’s keynote presentaion

Classroom-Based and Self-Driven Professional Development by Konrad Glogowski

Classrooms are more than just a physical place. They are places where we as teachers grow and learn.

And technology? Can play a role – connect with colleagues around the world; set up professional learning networks. We need to be reflective practioners first whose PD and growth emerge from their classroom. Creating a professional learning network without building a strong understanding of the context of our classroom, is that whatever knowledge we gain from it, will be just as useless as traditional PD. If we don’t know who we are as teachers, all that PD will never be more than a collection of trends and buzzwords.

First, we build a strong understanding of our context so that the kind of PD we are exposed to is a process that we direct, participate in and base on our own context. The health and the value of our PLN should be measured by the number of reflections and conversations that grow out of our classroom and connect to the conversations that grow out of our colleagues’ networks. This is where the value comes in – connection with 2 or 3 meaningful colleagues. If we don’t connect in this way, we will be “Learning from….” There’s nothing wrong with this, but to grow professionally, we need to focus on “Learning with …..”

Learning from is just watching, something delivered to me and absorbed without consideration for my professional context. Learning with building knowledge, working together to make sense of things. We need to listen to our classrooms FIRST – our 1^st node of connection. Most PD positions teachers as implementers of strategies, approaches and tasks that are predetermined and decontextualized. They might have worked well for others, but it might not work for your own classroom.

Learning from requires that we open ourselves and follow others. Learning with requires us to focus on us and our learning. Refer to Claxton’s quote. If we are to meet the demands of the future, we need to re-evaluate how we approach personal learning. We need to engage students as critical thinkers, navigators and inquirers. We need to focus on knowledge building as opposed to knowledge collecting. We need to help young people develop learning dispositions. We ourselves need to be inquirers and assessors – be in a state of perpetual experimentation.

How do we engage in meaningful PD that connects us and grows out of our classrooms?

1. Classroom-Based PD – Articulate context and learn from it; situates our professional growth in the context of our daily work and experiences in the classroom. Focuses on who we are, what we do and why we do it. We have a lot to learn from our classroom practice. We engage as learners when we reflect and ask critical questions. Based on interactions and input.
   1. Teachers and students are the primary stakeholders in our classrooms. Involve students in classroom development.
   2. Build on relationships with students.
   3. Look as classrooms as environments that are conducive to learning – not a random collection of students.
   4. Give students opportunities to critique teaching.
   5. Leads to meaningful action. Engages us in the process of learning to benefit ourselves and our students. Transformative practice begins with reflection.
   6. Reflective practice that results in meaningful action.
      1. We have to articulate our context. Get to know students as unique individuals.
      2. Discover limiting forces and practices.
      3. Work to effect change.

What is Reflection? Includes content and process. We can focus on instructional strategies, assessment, ability to engage students, physical presence in classroom, learning opportunities. We need to reflect on the goals of our classes and why we teach what we teach – More important because they involve us as individuals.

Process – 3 steps –

1. Describing ourselves – Engaging in the process of what we do  and why we do it

Concrete teaching events; identifying problems; hardest to ask what are our weaknesses. What is happening? Is it working? Is it working for everyone? Am I pleased?

1. Questioning – or informing. Unpack our classroom practice and see what causes us to teach what we do. Look at it from a variety of perspectives – parent, student, colleague. Why have I organized it this way? Practices we have done for awhile may not be effective.
2. Confronting – practices and long-held beliefs; what is important to us as an educator? What does this reveal about my values and beliefs? Where did they come from and how do they affect my classroom and my students?
3. Reconstructing our practice is included by some researchers – teaching does not consist of immutable practices. How can things be different? How can I effect change?

So what kind of PD do we need?

Investigate practices on a daily basis. Respond to the ever-changing world around us. By doing so, we challenge existing frames of reference and assumptions. We critique our daily practice. This situates PD in everyday context. This kind of PD focuses on asking ourselves constantly about what is working and why. This ensures that PD is ongoing and engages colleagues. Schools need to become communities of learning. We need to learn with our students and our colleagues. Teachers are exemplary learners and models. Students don’t need pre-packaged knowledge, they need to know how to construct it.

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