Teachers are asked to become a part of the partnership by not only educating students but also educating and mentoring young teacher candidates. Teachers are asked to discover new technologies and instructional methods and use those methods in their classroom.
What examples of teacher leadership do you see in your PDS, or what do you think might emerge if your school were to become a PDS?
My school is not a PDS school and I feel that it would greatly benefit it it was. My school has many educators who are still focused on the traditional ways of teaching, they could use the inspiration of incorporating these new technologies into the classroom to aid instruction. I think they remain on the traditional methods because they are not exposed to enough of the new technologies. We do have tech Tuesdays, an after school training program, however if the school was to be partnered with a University they would be able to see the research and benefits of incorporating these new technologies and instructional methods into the classroom.
What examples of PLCs do you see in your school or organization? Have teacher leaders emerged from these PLCs?
In my school we have an after school program in which teachers are compensated for their time and professional development. It is called Tech Tuesdays - about every Tuesday the TIS for the county provides instruction and training on ways of incorporating new technologies into classroom instruction. Some of the trainings have been about - online grading systems, webquests, google features, and CPS responders. This is a great 1 hour training session held about every week and it is voluntary as to when and how often teachers would like to attend. For the most part the trainings are very beneficial and have a good output. One of the other good factors about this program is that it is an ongoing training and not a one day workshop offered. The TIS that teaches these instructional methods was in fact a teacher before taking on this position, as many educators that complete these trainings end up working in the board office or as administrators in their school.
There are at least three paths for teacher leaders; one that leads out of the classroom and into an administrative role (principal or central office staff), one for teachers who remain in their classrooms to develop and share a deeper knowledge base about teaching, and one that bridges the two previously mentioned paths that is for teachers who spend part of their time in a classroom and part of their time taking on additional administrative and professional development responsibilities. If you were designing a program or professional development intended to prepare teacher leaders to take advantage of these multiple pathways, what would it look like? What learning experiences would you include?
I think that it is important for educators to understand what is happening in the improvements of instruction and technology integration. I believe if I was to design a program it would definitely have a part that focused on instruction and technology integration to improve student learning and understanding. I think that it is important to have an ongoing communication with the educators, so this is not just a one-shot training but an ongoing and continuous training. I would like to receive feedback and input from the educators concerning what works in the classroom and what does not work, having times set aside for discussion on areas of improvement and collaboration of success or failures in the area of instruction or teaching. I feel that educators could learn a great deal from this method and it would be very beneficial. It would be nice if we could find a way to compensate the educators for their time, but as funds are limited in the educational system, that might be one of the harder tasks.
