{"id":22,"date":"2012-11-21T22:04:19","date_gmt":"2012-11-21T22:04:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/adamcaplan\/?p=22"},"modified":"2012-11-21T22:06:13","modified_gmt":"2012-11-21T22:06:13","slug":"professional-learning-we-are-the-experts-we-need","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/adamcaplan\/2012\/11\/21\/professional-learning-we-are-the-experts-we-need\/","title":{"rendered":"Professional Learning: We are the experts we need"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>On Donuts<\/h3>\n<p>Someone once told me that it would be better for me to eat a dozen donuts in one day than a single donut every day for 12 days.<\/p>\n<p>It has been a while since that day and I wasn\u2019t listening with especially detailed attention, but my recollection of the reason was that the body has a threshold for fat and once it reaches that threshold, the body directly passes the rest.<\/p>\n<p>I think of this story from time to time because it reminds me that the same raw materials can have a different effect depending on how you handle them.<\/p>\n<h3>On Experts<\/h3>\n<p>The pressures and resources associated with organizing a PD Day \u2014 mostly the brief-but-intense period of time and the limited-but-earmarked amount of money \u2014 sometimes result in the procurement of an \u201cexpert\u201d to come into the school to deliver an address to staff or faculty on a topic chosen by the organizers (often the same people responsible for the time and money).<\/p>\n<p>This can lead to a feeling that PD is \u201cbeing done to\u201d staff, that it takes people from outside the organization to provide the group with ideas of significance, or that the single-day dose of inspiration and ideas will provide a clear map of the road ahead.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m pleased to say that on Friday, Nov 9, our school didn\u2019t do that.<\/p>\n<h3>On Learning Communities<\/h3>\n<p>On our most recent PD day, after an assembly for updates and direction, staff were offered a choice of topics.<\/p>\n<p>Sessions included:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>differentiated offerings for teaching with SMART Boards<\/li>\n<li>a round-table discussion about assessing using rubrics<\/li>\n<li>a shared forum for teachers to share their use of WikiSpaces, Weebly and Edmodo<\/li>\n<li>a launch and follow-up look at Action Research<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div>A variety of administrators and faculty took the lead on the 9 sessions, pulling together expert texts, preexisting resources and examples from around our school. It definitely had an \u2018in-house\u2019 feel; it was a reminder that the presenter becomes the medium and is able to achieve buy-in or risk-free participation through their (our) own local authenticity.<\/div>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Donuts Someone once told me that it would be better for me to eat a dozen donuts in one day than a single donut every day for 12 days. It has been a while since that day and I wasn\u2019t listening with especially detailed attention, but my recollection of the reason was that the &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/adamcaplan\/2012\/11\/21\/professional-learning-we-are-the-experts-we-need\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Professional Learning: We are the experts we need&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/adamcaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/adamcaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/adamcaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/adamcaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/adamcaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/adamcaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/adamcaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/adamcaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/adamcaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}