11 – Professional Development

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Next week I will be expanding my teaching experience by teaching at a Community College.  This comes after being in graduate school for two years and being away from participating in professional development activities.  When I taught at a middle school, teachers were required to fulfill a specific amount of credits for professional development.  This included attending workshops that could be away from or at school, along with a few other activities.  True these were mostly beneficial; however I developed more professionally from attending conferences, such as NCTM, because I could receive a first hand experience of what effective educators were doing in their classrooms.  But now I can easily accomplish this daily via internet by reading blogs, listening to podcasts, or watching online videos. The accessibility to enhance teaching practices makes me wonder what type of impact this will have on the professional development market. Hopefully, the impact will not be negative; rather it should expand the market. Just as technology should not be a substitute for a teacher, neither should it be for professional development. With this said, I still question how much of my professional development will be recognized. Should a blog such as this be credited towards earning professional development credits? I believe so. A blog is a written record of development plus it has the opportunity to reach an extensive audience. Compare this with speaking at a conference where the information is shared with a few and then it is over. This does not mean that one is better than the other. Yet, the comparison reveals how each way can effectively communicate important practices being implemented in the classroom.

As I re-enter the realm of being a full time teacher, I want reflect on opportunities of professional development.  A short list of choices include publishing to and/or reading journals, attending and/or speaking at conferences, reading and/or contributing to the blogsphere, and participating in workshops.  Perhaps I have only been focusing on how I can develop as a professional teacher, ignoring the possibility that I can develop as a professional student too.  That is how can I expect myself to make a greater impact on my students if I am only attempting to expand as a teacher?  Likewise, should a principal continue to expand themselves only as an administrator?  Will a principal begin to loose touch of them self as teacher, thus creating a separation between the teachers that they are working with.  If this is true, then it would appear that I must make a conscious effort to explore and expand myself as both a teacher and a student since only then I can relate to them as a student and impact them as a teacher. Furthermore, a teacher usually begins to fulfill many roles. I know that for myself I have had to be more than a math teacher. Parent, motivator, counselor, and janitor are just a few other roles I have chosen to be. Overall, being a teacher, as most educators would probably agree, is basically a jack of all trades type of profession and trying to develop all of these trades would be overwhelming, (which may be why many teachers leave after a couple of years). Therefore, I want to be aware that there are numerous areas that I can enhance myself when I choose my professional development.