Professional Development for Teachers: Is It Overrated?
I look back at my first year of teaching and cringe. I had the Disneyesque vision of what teaching would be like: perfectly crafted bulletin boards representing each month of the year, students sitting quietly in neat rows waving their hands to answer my thought-provoking questions, freedom to leave my classroom as soon as the bell rang, and long summer vacations. Any educator hearing this would laugh. I was living in my fantasy teaching world and unprepared for the true challenges of reality teaching.
I left a fast-paced, stressful, 50+ hours a week marketing job to begin my new career as a teacher, hoping to train and inspire students for the jobs of tomorrow. An Alternative Education Certification program allowed me to begin teaching immediately, which meant entering the classroom without any formal education training and with very minimal on-boarding. Having once been a student I thought, how hard could it be?!
Upon entering my classroom, my enthusiasm quickly drained when I realized I was just a warm body thrown into a world that I was not prepared to enter. My new world consisted of a cramped cinderblock room without books, materials, or even a curriculum map. My administrator excitedly told me I had the flexibility to design my own curriculum, but I didn’t even know what a curriculum meant much less how to create a lesson! Think back to pre-Pinterest and Teachers Pay Teachers, if you can.
Within months, I went from being an eager new teacher ready to take on the world, to one who had to pray to make it through the day. Fantasy teaching quickly became survival teaching. I needed help! I had to become the student once again and learn what I needed to know to become an effective educator by finding professional development materials and collaborating with teachers who were experts in their field.
Today, as an experienced educator, I can see all the things I did wrong in my first year of teaching. I was teaching college-level content to students who were performing below grade level and were learning English as a second language. Not to mention the social aspects of poverty and the diverse learning needs, and the accommodations that accompany them, that many student face.
How many survivalist teachers are out there who can be transformed into exceptional teachers with just some support and guidance? Our profession is in endanger with record high turnover rates for new teachers. What can you do to keep our profession growing and in demand? Think about how you can use professional development and credentialing programs to revolutionize your school, students, and teachers.