I heard a sad story the other evening. It was during the annual NSDC conference here in Seattle, and a bunch of us were gathered for dinner downtown after the first day. A colleague began to describe the teaching career of her young niece, who had dreamed of being an educator since she was eight years old. Her first year had gone well; she had been paired with an excellent mentor who had been very supportive and helpful. A mentor who then moved on to work with the next first-year teacher. Now, after five years in the classroom, my friend’s niece wanted out. She was lonely, wasn’t getting any feedback and was concerned that she just wasn’t any good at teaching. She was looking for a new career.

Me being me, I didn’t think too much about it. In fact, I had a hard time relating to the young lady’s problem. I had no mentor during my first year, and it seemed like I learned everything on my own, without a whole lot of support from anyone. My principals have generally left me alone, which is pretty much the way I like it.

But I’m an idiot.

And it took world-renowned cultural anthropologist Jennifer James to make me realize that this story was more important than the interrupted career of one frustrated teacher. James was the keynote speaker at breakfast the following morning, and part of her lecture was on the differences between my generation (I’m 48) and that of our younger teachers. 

My generation attended grade school in straight, quiet rows of desks. When our young teachers were in grade school, they sat around in cooperative groups at tables of four. We did our high school homework all alone in our rooms. They did their high school homework in study groups. We did our college homework all alone in our rooms. They went through college, including education classes, in cohorts; learning together and supporting each other.

My generation taught their generation how to work together. We encouraged them to collaborate, helped them form study groups and cohorts, taught them how to give constructive feedback and how to support each other.

Then we hired them to teach in our classrooms, gave them a mentor for a year, and left them all alone with a group of kids. For good. Well, not completely; every now and then we take them out and send them to two-hour workshops so that they’ll learn something new.

But that’s not how we taught them to learn. And it certainly isn’t the way the NSDC envisions professional development. Professional development, done correctly, needs to be ongoing, sustained, job-embedded and focused on the kids and the standards we’re trying to help them reach. And it needs to be done collectively; with support, feedback and encouragement.

Professional development, done correctly, would not have left that young teacher alone in her classroom without someone to learn with. But it happened. And it happens too often in other classrooms across this state and across this country. The recent economic downturn, of course, has only made it worse. As this recent op-ed, written by Stephanie Hirsch, executive director of NSDC, and Patricia Wasley, dean of the UW school of education, explains, Washington has completely eliminated state funding for professional development.

We’ve decided that it’s just not worth it to try to retain our young teachers.

That’s not to say that there’s only bad news, however. For me, one of the two highlights of the NSDC conference was the unveiling of a recent publication from the National Board profiling Washington State’s leadership in using National Board Certification as a powerful form of professional development. Which isn’t surprising, since our state’s model for supporting National Board candidates places a premium on collaborative work.

The other highlight was a reception to announce the creation of The Staff Development Council of Washington, a new affiliate of the NSDC. Having a new advocate in the state to promote effective, job-embedded professional development certainly can’t hurt, especially an organization that shares the same mission as the NSDC.

On the whole, though, the state of professional development in Washington has a long ways to go. Which is probably true for the other 49 states. Too often, we hire teachers; give them a key, some kids, and a classroom and leave them alone. Just the way we used to like it.

But that just doesn’t work anymore. The teachers we’re hiring now need professional development that works for them and fits the way they learn. Not for their sake, but for the sake of the students they’re hired to teach. Policy-makers need to know this. They need to know that when they cut funding for professional development, they’re cutting funding for instruction that works.

And they aren’t going to know this unless someone tells them. That’s where advocacy comes in. We, as educators, need to be the ones telling lawmakers that we need professional development; and we need the kind of professional development that works. Teachers, who aren’t always used to being outspoken advocates for their own profession, may need to build their capacity to do so. Blogging is one way, of course; but there are many others. At that same NSDC Conference, The Center for Strengthening the Teaching Profession presented a session on grassroots advocacy, which is exactly what it will take for us to make our profession development work for us.

We can’t afford to lose our good, young teachers by abandoning them in their classrooms. They’re the ones whose profession we need to develop.