Professional Learning 2.0

I am working with a small group of educators who believe the culture of professional development can be improved. For the most part, the rhetoric tied to professional development is negative. Many are constrained to a short time period, provide no support or modeling for teachers, while content presented is generic and passive. It doesn’t have to be this way.

We have begun to implement changes that make our classrooms more significant learning environments and are encouraged by the response we see in our students. They have been given more opportunities to take ownership and make choices in their learning and exercise their voice in an authentic way.

How might we create this culture of inquiry for the educators we work with as well? We can start with a simple shift in rhetoric. As teachers, are we not in fact professional learners?

Professional learning recognizes that teachers are learning and growing just like their students. While the term “development” indicates a process that has an end point, “learning”recognizes that professional growth is a never-ending, lifelong process.

The biggest effect in our business is the expertise of teachers. It’s teachers who work together, collectively, collaboratively, to understand their impact.

John Hattie

We believe we can improve the effectiveness of teachers and create a culture of inquiry with improved professional learning, and we believe using ePortfolios is the best way to achieve this vision. Below is the Why, How, & What to our mission.

Vive la Learning Revolution! Vive la Positive Rhetoric!

“It isn’t the circumstances that are crucial, it’s what we say about the circumstances that matter.” -Ben Zander

Can we create a vision for education, for our classrooms, that can spark and thrive within our current education system? In a true revolution, there is a death – so what if the death we experience is our downward spiral thinking? If we remove the binary nature of winners and losers, of passing and failing? It will still exist, as that is the reality of where we work, but we choose to view it all as what it is: and abstract! WE put value on the A. 

What if we construct a significant learning environment and do all the things we know are right, regardless of what anyone else is doing? Can we play their game, but on our own terms? Can we go an entire school year never discussing grades with anyone? 

I’m talking about declaring that we’ve already won the the revolution, because I SEE it. If we have a VISION of what true learning looks like, we can make it happen in our classrooms, and regardless of what our students see elsewhere, they thrive with us. 

TED. (2010, May 24). Bring on the learning revolution! Sir Ken Robinson [Video]. YouTube. https://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_learning_revolution

TED. (2012, Feb 26). Work (How to give an A) Benjamin Zander [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTKEBygQic0&list=PL9T6s38O7hVLJFO76HAhlINMMRl8z1_Yf