Tips On Improving Educators Professional Development

By Laura Watson


In order for students to learn and have good education, they must be provided with quality teachers. But people often forget that teachers must also be provided with training and preparation for them to efficiently teach their students. Times are changing and teachers should be able to adapt by learning new techniques and ideas for teaching.

Unfortunately, those children that need competent teachers the most are located in remote areas, places that have conflicts or somewhere with low income. Administrators of school districts are providing seminars and workshop for educators but have been conducting them inefficiently. If you are an administrator, here are some things to do in improving educators professional development.

Make the educators feel professionally competent by providing access to good quality development training and workshops. They teach children with different academic or emotional needs and they tend not to have the capabilities on handling these. You should help them to use instructional practices that creates great results like precision in explanations, giving feedback and formative assessment.

Focus on at least one or two instructional practices you want them to improve, learn or refine to make it simple. Select which instructional practices to teach by getting inputs from the teachers. All levels of your organization should know what it will be with the corresponding expectations by communicating it to them properly.

Support provided should be ongoing in order to make sure that the teaching practices and techniques taught to them are being used. Guidance through observing the way they implement the things they learned and feedback must be given. Proper coaching is not done through data collection nor monitoring.

Teacher collaboration and peer support should be encouraged as well. This can be done by teachers visiting a classroom that one of them is teaching and giving feedback on the techniques he is using. They must be able to trust and share knowledge with each other.

Recruit great trainers with considerable skill and experience in teaching. He must also have experienced the things he teaches and does not only base on what is written on the manual. He should be an example to the educators by practicing the things he teaches during the workshop so he could be followed.

Schedule the development seminars well and inform them ahead of time so that they can prepare and free up their own schedules as well. Educators have also a life of their own and a family that they worry about and look after. Failing to do this or announcing the training on the day itself will result on them being physically present but their minds are wandering to other things they were supposed to do on that time.

Understanding these things do take a lot of time and changes will not be seen immediately. Avoid changing goals every year by having another instructional practices that you want implemented the following year. They need the support given to continue for a year more to make sure the changes are implemented. Attending seminars a few times a year will not be enough and feedback and follow up should be done because this is an ongoing process. Effective professional development improves your teacher and makes your school better.




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