Time for Professional Development

 Making Time to Reflect on Practice

This past week, the wonderful and super talented Elissa Gelleny, extended the professional development she had introduced to our staff last year. While sitting in the PD session, what hit me was how many people “took to” twitter and its potential as a professional development tool. The level of energy and excitement–even for many staff who were visibly nervous about twitter–was infectious.

Why bring up this simple and obvious observation? It helped me to think toward an action plan for Cohort 21. Our staff truly desires professional development that will connect us all together to discuss pedagogy, instructional strategies, assessment strategies and so on. However, we also want to expand our own knowledge of educational issues and debates through research and inquiry. How can we manage all this when the one commodity most needed–time–is so limited? This is when I realized that creating a digital professional learning community (DPLC) through Diigo might be one “pathway” to find the time (or rather to reallocate our time). The the mental juices kept on flowing…I thought, in order to walk the talk why don’t I collaborate with Elissa in this project and link our digital conversation in Diigo to a twitter chat that she can host? The possibilities of this DPLC became endless in my mind!

Just as my own excitement flared, the “what ifs” set in. What if staff choose not to participate? What if digital conversation is dominated by a few voices? What if…what if…. what if? Breathe. I need to constantly remind myself that providing professional development is offering others an opportunity–some may take that opportunity and others may not. Its really about motivating individuals to see potential.

Now that I have the “rough frame” of what I aim to do, I will need to work toward the specifics. And we are off to the races!