All posts tagged: professional development

Best Practices For Teaching During COVID-19

Published by

One of my favorite pictures of teaching in action. “Hey Google” “What are the best practices for teaching during Covid-19?” Spoiler alert: There are none. When my school district produced a mandatory professional development session that taught teachers how to transition to online learning, I became immediately skeptical. I was also frustrated at the utter hubris it takes to claim to know anything about online learning when your background is everything but, and then present it as a mandatory training module. While I did learn some things about Canvas that I was completely unaware of (which I am deeply grateful for), there was a lot of unnecessary stress added by the way the PD was rolled out. I want to make it very clear, I’m not frustrated with our district coaches. I’m frustrated with the administration that made the decisions and how it was rolled out in typical half-ass fashion, i.e., not having their poop in a group. Every year teachers are bombarded with crap. And I do mean crap. Between education corporations looking to sell you the latest …

Distance Learning: Day 1 – Planning

Published by

Technically, this is day 2. However, yesterday I had just enough anxiety to make me productive . . . at reading and phone games. I did get a few things done near the end of the day, but the entire idea of online learning and all the things that my district is placing on us for training in the meantime has me a bit overwhelmed. In communication with other teachers, they are feeling the same. In some ways I am learning. I am gathering ideas for what to do. In other ways, I wish I could just get to work on my own classes without being hindered by district trainings, meetings, and check-ins. From a critical discourse analysis perspective, the message the district is sending is that they don’t trust us. They think we are going to waste these 8 days the governor has granted and not do any planning, as if we would let our students down like that. At the very least, I am finding the district training to be at least moderately helpful and …

Importance of Perspective

Published by

I spent today in a train-the-trainer training hosted by my state’s licensing board for teachers. This training was not at all what I expected based on the new state standards for relicensure. It was better. One of the things that I took away from today was that getting teachers to see themselves as active agents in the world who respond to the world through their own biases is the first step. While I subconsciously already knew this, the way the information was being presented offered examples of just how this can be accomplished in meaningful ways. As a white, male functioning within my own comfort zone of cultural interaction, I can easily walk into a room without considering the lives of those around me. In fact, I do this every day. I think we all do. But the important first step of recognizing how that lens affects everything else we do as a human allows me to think about other perspectives and notice differences. It’s like when you learn another language. It’s not until you understand …