PD Days
Professional Development Days need to be constructed with care in order to be effective. How many PD Days felt that it was just a waste of time? Unfortunately, some of them are because they aren’t being created or adjusted to fit in the 21st century learning. So, the next time you are organizing a math PD, ask yourself these questions:
1. What are the teacher’s strengths in mathematics content? Weaknesses?
2. What are the teacher’s pedagogical strengths? Weaknesses?
3. What are the barriers that the teachers are facing when implementing new practices in their classrooms?
4. Is there time at the end for teachers to reflect and provide feedback?
Create workshops that have clear goals and are focused on different content each time. Here is an example of workshops that have been created for PD sessions.
Let’s Look at the figure below. It shows you a snippet of what kind of activities are done in during a workshop. “Do the math” and “Explore the task” provides opportunities for teachers to engage in mathematical problem solving. We need to create meaningful and effective opportunities for our teachers to learn, take risks, and be challenged so that they are able to take and apply it into their own classrooms. Yes, sometimes we don’t have time; however, we can always adapt things in order for it to work in our community. We just need to be flexible and motivated, and everything will fall into place.
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