CREATIVE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT FOR FACULTY MEETINGS

Do you feel like your faculty meetings are a bit on the "stale"side?  Do your teachers look at you like you're the teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off or nod off during meetings like Charlie Brown and Lucy do when their teacher is talking ("WAH WA WA WAH WAH")?  Wishing you could add value to otherwise mundane monthly meetings?

Consider offering high quality professional development during faculty meetings.  Many principals WANT to offer PD opportunities but are not sure what to do or have a limited or non-existent budget for PD.  One creative option is to use your own talented teachers.  All of us have teachers that we know are simply outstanding.  Year after year they work miracles in their classrooms, connecting with hard-to-reach kids, raising individual students' reading scores, and just simply fostering a love for learning in their students.  Why not tap them to provide 10-20 minute PD mini-sessions at your faculty meetings? If they are not comfortable presenting in front of their peers alone, encourage them to invite a colleague or their entire team to join them.

Topics could include: instructional strategies they use that have proven successful, instructional technology hacks, classroom management techniques, best practices in differentiated instruction or cooperative learning, student engagement techniques, data related topics, or maybe something focused on improving relationships and your school culture and climate.  No doubt you have untapped experts right in your own school that, with a little encouragement and support, would be more than willing to enhance monthly faculty meetings with their knowledge and skills.

You could go one step further and, at the start of the school year, invite everyone to give feedback on a Google form about the kinds of PD mini-sessions they would have interest in participating in.  They could select a buddy or two and sign up to present on an identified topic based on their own interest or expertise at an upcoming faculty meeting, much like teachers select a month to bring in breakfast or lunch on pay day Fridays.  If you have a large staff consider offering "teacher choice" PD sessions at faculty meetings.  Meetings structured around teacher choice have several mini PD sessions occurring simultaneously on different topics.  Teachers have the option to choose which session they want to attend.  Just like with our students, by offering choice you are increasing the probability that attendees will engage with, remember, recall, and apply what they learn.

You can have teachers sign up in advance, if desired, or just report to the session they want at the designated time.  Allowing for a brief, small group share out after the PD sessions within the larger group faculty meeting gives session attendees an opportunity to talk about what they just learned with others.  Set a time limit (i.e. 1 minute each) and use a cooperative learning structure such as round robin to facilitate the sharing.

If you simply don't have enough teachers volunteer, reach out to community agencies that serve your school community and invite representatives to come speak to your faculty.  Strengthening relationships with agencies such as child welfare/social services,  mental health, area food bank(s) and homeless shelters, drug and alcohol counseling providers, literacy volunteers, office of child and family services, disability services and others focused on the well-being of children and their families can only benefit your students.

By tapping talented teachers and staff within your own building or district and providing them opportunities to showcase what they do well everyday in their classrooms fosters healthy risk-taking, professional growth, and collegiality. Increasing your knowledge and understanding of child and family service providers within your community strengthens school-community relations and may even provide that needed information to benefit a student or family at a later time.  Either way, embedding mini PD sessions within your regularly scheduled faculty meetings adds value to them and provides opportunity for you to lead while learning right alongside your team.