Share YOUR Professional Development Horror Story

You won't be surprised to hear that during a TLN online discussion about how teachers can gain more control over their own professional development, we heard some horror stories about administrator-driven PD. Here are two examples offered by Renee. We invite you to share one of your own PD nightmares by clicking on "Comments" at the end of this blog entry!

Renee wrote:

For what it's worth, many teachers are in situations where they have been denied any real control over their own PD for so long, they have nothing but low expectations for it.

Case in point: The first school district in which I worked had it as a matter of policy that PD was to be handled at the central office level. Period. Our opening PD session one year consisted of an entire afternoon listening to a non-educator ("motivational speaker") tell us stories about his childhood and ended with having us all stand and sing all the verses to "You Picked A Fine Time to Leave Me Lucille" (the old Kenny Rogers song). For this, he got paid over $5,000.

My second school district attempted to put teachers more in control of our PD, but backed off when teachers wanted to do what district leaders considered unproductive and wasteful. Things such as: team meetings, get peer help in learning better ways to use new software programs with students, examining student work across subject areas, or [worst of all!] developing lesson materials.

To be sure there are also teachers who have the opportunity to obtain meaningful PD and choose not to do so. One teacher complained to me, "Why should I try to learn anything new to do in my classroom? They won't let me do it!" She was in one of our post NCLB test-prep obsessed (or possessed) schools. Cynicism and frustration have driven many teachers to either throw up their hands and retreat, or seek their own personal PD and leave their school/district offerings in the hands of others.