Job Embedded PD

For many educators, job embedded professional development is just part of your day or at least your week. There are a myriad of ways to carry out job embedded PD, but I will focus on one here. When researching and writing my dissertation, I found that teachers were more apt to implement professional development if there was on going support for their learning.

Knowing that, one way to grow teachers is to have on site experts model effective strategies. Then that same person can team teach, coach or observe and provide feedback to teachers. Academic coaches or instructional coaches often fulfill this role. This type of support allows one person or maybe a team to be a available for coaching, modeling, team teaching, providing feedback, etc. There can be joint planning sessions with the coach as well.

If your budget does not allow for instructional coaches, teachers can fulfill similar roles for one another. Each teacher has his or her own set of strengths that are often willing to share with others. This helps grow teachers but also allows teachers to take on more leadership roles and responsibilities, if they choose to accept them. As an administrator, my role is to facilitate teachers helping one another by providing adequate planning times, helping provide coverage in a class while the teachers work to learn from one another.

I will be sharing other ways to incorporate job embedded professional development in future posts.