By Tom
My family and I are down in Arizona this week, trying to dry out from a ridiculously wet winter. Coincidentally, our beloved Mariners are in the exact same place! So we went to a Spring Training baseball game today for the first time, and frankly, it was a little weird.
Now we've been to a lot of Mariners games. But this one was different, and at first I couldn't quite get a handle on it. It wasn't so much the weather, which was perfect; like Seattle in July. It certainly wasn't the fact that the Mariners were getting creamed; God knows we've seen that often enough. No, it was something about the way the players went about their business. They were working, but differently. Their attitude wasn't what I'm used to seeing when I watch pro baseball, yet there was something oddly familiar about it.
And then I figured it out. This was professional development! These were their Learning Improvement Days. Or more accurately, Baseball Improvement Days. They looked a lot like we do on those days without the kids. They were busy, but not the way they're usually busy. The atmosphere wasn't so serious; yet they weren't messing around.
Regular baseball games have a certain understated intensity. Spring training games don't. But there's learning going on. A pitcher isn't just trying to get batters out; he might just be trying out a new grip on his curveball. Action research, if you will. And as he watches the ball sail over the centerfield fence, he might say to himself, "Maybe the old grip wasn't as bad as I thought." (Yeah, I'm talking about you, Carlos SIla).
Professional development is huge. You can't just get up every morning and do things the same way you did them yesterday and expect to be any better. You need to try new things. And then you keep the good stuff and get rid of the bad. (Remember teaching reading with those SRA cards?) And like every baseball coach will tell you, it has to happen in conjunction with the rest of the team. Any player can stay in shape during the off-season, just like every teacher can take a class or read some books over the summer, but true professional development only happens when you're together with your colleagues.
Which brings me to the point of this post. There is a very good chance that the Washington State Legislature will release a budget next week that greatly reduces the number of teachers' professional development days. That's a bad idea. If we're going to improve as a profession, we need to do it together, as a team. And it's not going to happen from 7:30 to 8:10 on a Tuesday or from 3:20 to 3:50 on a Thursday. It's going to happen from 8:00 to 3:30, every other month on a Friday. Because that's when we have our Spring Training. The legislature is trying to do their job. They have to balance the budget. That's in the law. But they aren't doing their job if they make it impossible for us to do our jobs effectively. That's also in the law. So contact your legislator. Save our professional development days. And do it now, before the regular season starts.
When a teacher decides to miss instructional time with students to pursue $$ for PD, the PD becomes “Professional Detriment”. Teachers that maximize instructional time are statistically the bunch that impact students the greatest. I am tired of reading about how teachers “need” to take professional development days as if the only way to learn how to be a better teacher is when there is a sub in front of YOUR students. Please try and debate this point. I want to hear counter arguements.
@Tom, @Ali, I think there is some great discussion and thoughts coming out of this based on the analogy (comparison) that best suits the purpose. I like how you, Tom, mention that doctors are not out to save more lives than another doctor, that they work as a team. My wife is a nurse, many of our friends are doctors, and this is true. I have hung out in the ER and watched everyone work as a team. While some doctors, nurses, and techs are better than others, or some have skill when dealing with talking to patients and others have skill with procedures, no one is going to sabotage the health of a patient to be “the best”.
I feel a “t-chart” coming on. Education and Medicine. Students and Patients. Staff and Staff.
In this way, teachers do this…well, if the school is a highly-functional school (there is a lot of research on what makes a school “highly functioning”). Teachers want students to succeed and learn. I want students to succeed. If success for a student means working with other teachers, and it should (and does), then I want to do so. The amount of skill and brain power captured within a school is mesmerizing. Why it is not fully utilized is the lack of Connections, Comfort, and Collegiality–https://www.storiesfromschool.org/2009/04/the-faculty-roomopen-thread.html
Actually, Ali, I much prefer the physician analogy. I happened to be watching baseball at the time, though, so that’s what I wrote about. What I like about doctors is that they’re all in it together. No one’s trying to save more lives than the other one. (At least that’s how I imagine it.) This is also true in a functional school system: Everyone’s taking responsibility for the education of ALL the students. And if PD starts from that point, it works.
We should be careful of the baseball analogy, as Ali points out if, for no other reason, than it’s baseball. Come on Tom (jab). Isn’t there something better out there than baseball? :O)
No, jokes aside. I think Ali’s push of the discussion to make the comparison to a family physician is a good one. I think, if we look hard enough, we can find analogies between many jobs and teaching.
Let’s be careful with a baseball analogy. I see educators more in the light of the family physician, caring for the growth of a healthy mind and body, not as an overpaid entertainer with lots of time off who only “follows the money”. As educators we work with the whole family, analyze, diagnose, and prescribe a course of action to improve each individual – like a family doctor would. We confer with other professionals focused on helping the individual, we refer families to specialists, and need therefore to keep abreast of the latest trends in our field which can include how brain function impacts learning, implications of ADD and autism, as well as strategies to overcome cultural and language barriers. No one would want a physician who does not stay current or work continuously to improve their practice and no parent wants a mediocre teacher. Our job is not to entertain but to educate – a mindset that we need to continuously cultivate and support.
@Mark, this is the great part of a discussion. It spirals, gets lost, and moves toward connected ideas. I like that. You mention that 4 years of English may not be for everyone, I posted on a similar topic: https://www.storiesfromschool.org/2008/10/hey-school-is-n.html
I agree…the school day, not just the overall system, must be completely overhauled. We are applying a model that was perfectly content to leave children behind, since at the onset of compulsory education, it was just fine for kids to be left behind to work on the farm, in the family business, etc., where they could eventually earn a living that could conceivably support a family–not to mention that this family was not as consumption- and material-oriented as today’s families. College or other post-secondary education was not a foregone conclusion for so many as it seems to be now, and high dropout rates didn’t raise an eyebrow because of the economic/occupation structure of the nation.
I don’t have a solution, of course. Just rants and complaints. I know that not every school is focused only on college prep, many are. At my high school, our vocational offerings are slim to none, or are hobby oriented not occupation oriented. My upbringing in school (learning how build a budget and to measure and order wood for a building project, how to determine types and quantities of feed, fertilizer, seed rates, and how to weld four different ways and rebuild an engine…all in high school classes in my own school’s building) are out of vogue in many places, or are restricted to magnet skills schools. Yet, I would argue, these are very marketable skills that enable students to earn very good livings for their families. Again, I digress… but my point is that our schools, in many cases, in their efforts to churn out well-rounded, college-ready kids are actually limiting the options of many kids. The kind of kid that would rather spend the day in a welding hut won’t always be well served taking four years of English literature.
I guess I really digressed…we’re talking about teacher PD here. Unfortunately, my pie in the sky about daily PD is probably not going to function in our modern segmented-bell-to-bell secondary schedule, much less in an elementary schedule where the teacher only gets a bathroom break when the kids head out to PE.
I agree with the original post: preserving LID days is a crucial first step. When the climate levels out in this state, and if the stars align and schools are funded in a way that actually values education rather than offering lip-service, then we can actually look at the real problem which leads to all our complaints: the antiquated school structure (figuratively and literally).
Sorry for the rambling, I’m on spring break…yet another bone of contention… “those teachers get all those days off!!”
Mark, Tom, Others…let’s keep the baseball analogy going for a moment. Mark mentioned the stretching and conditioning between game-day performances. Hopefully, education will not ever be such a thing. Many would equate a state test to “game-day”. I hope that this does not happen. In this model, the whole year or academic career could be decided based on one “game-day” action, event, or situation.
I know that this is not the original intention of Tom’s post. However, through the discussion, it hit me. Professional Development, as Mark states, would be more valid if done all of the time. This would be near impossible given the way schools are structured, but not totally impossible.
By the way, we don’t have a 21st century school model. For the most part, the school system, aside from computers and growth in how teachers work their craft, the system/structure/model of the school system is still pretty much an industrial revolution model: put raw materials into the system, apply various things, out pops finished product. But, as we all know, this is not possible with today’s population of kids. Or yesterday’s population either. It has been a long time since this worked.
This is why teachers today are much stronger, more a master of the art of teaching. It is not just content. It is the knowledge of how to get student A from a level of knowledge that is here (hand held low) to a level of knowledge here (hand held higher).
Professional development is huge, absolutely, and a tough sell to parents, policymakers, etc. The “yet another inservice day off for teachers” from parents, students, my wife, whoever… Unfortunately, too, not all PD is created equal.
I do hope our PD days can be preserved or reinstated, but I’d rather see more ongoing if not DAILY focused professional development worked into our 21st century school model.
I don’t know much about pro baseball, but I assume that a club’s overall success is measured on game-day performance only, not on the time in-between. I assume that in stretches between games, even immediately before, there is conditioning and training, “ongoing professional development,” without which gameday success would be jeopardized. In addition to spring training, that continuous conditioning–to which time is devoted–is what maintains the caliber of performance.