Professional Development and Collective Wisdom
An old story… a young teacher comes to his first staff meeting where he sees an veteran teacher already sitting down. He sits down next to an older teacher who says to him, “You know… when I die… I hope it’s in a faculty meeting.”
The young teacher says, “Why?”
To which the older teacher replies, “So when I cross over, I won’t know the difference.”
Most educators have been through some terrible staff meetings and professional development sessions where people took turns reading to them, talking at them and maybe giving people the odd moment or two to discuss with the person next to them. And most of the time, educators are forced to sit through meetings and professional development that, pedagogically, would get them written up if they taught that way in their classes.
That’s got to stop.
There’s a simple question we should ask when we bring teachers together:
“Does the structure of this meeting / PD / whatever leverage the collective wisdom of the room?”
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And if it doesn’t, we need to ask ourselves some hard questions:
- Do we need to be together for this or could this information be disseminated in other ways?
- Are we missing the chance for people to learn together and solve the problems as a community?
- Who does this meeting really serve?
- What are the meta-lessons that the participants are learning about what teaching methods are valued by this meeting?
If we want active classrooms, we have to have active PD.
If we want teachers to create collaborative classrooms, we have to create a collaborative culture in our adult learning and problem solving.
If we want teachers to value the ideas and experiences of our students, then we must value the ideas and experiences of our teachers when they come together to learn.
And if we want our schools to find innovative, powerful solutions to the problems we face, we must all learn to seek out the collective wisdom of the room.
cross-posted at practicaltheory.org/blog.
Chris Lehmann is the founding principal of the Science Leadership Academy, a progressive science and technology high school in Philadelphia, PA. that was recognized by Ladies Home Journal as one of the Ten Most Amazing Schools in the US and was recognized as an Apple Distinguished School in 2009 and 2010. Chris was a 2014 winner of the Harold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Education and has been honored by the White House as a Champion of Change for his work in education reform. In June 2010, Chris was named as one of the “30 Most Influential People in EdTech” by Technology & Learning Magazine. Read more at his blog, http://practicaltheory.org/blog.