5 Steps for writing professional development plans for teachers…
It’s funny, when I think of what the most effective aspects of a school leader’s job could revolve around — no matter the situation or time or area, it’s always working with teachers. An administrators job is to be supportive while leading in the direction that is best for the students that go there.
Administrators that are great supporters, they are usually considered great administrators too.
I’ve worked in several schools that needed support in so many different ways, and that made it necessary to create a system, to organize the steps in making not only a development plan, but one that was measurable, obtainable, focused, and connected curriculum and instruction with student engagement.
First step, in order for any administrator to know what support will look like, they have to get involved. Each situation is going to be different, and every staff member is unique. In getting to know them, ask your staff. Look at your school data, look at percentages, attendance, incident rates reported, parent survey results, and then — literally, go see them teach. After you see them teach, talk with them about it.
Get to know your staff, so you can work together better — it’s all about your relationships.
If you see high incident rates reported from a teacher, see that they report high attendance rates for their early morning class or last class of the day, and hear that they aren’t a part of any of the clubs or student events. Your informal observation of one of their lessons showed that the teacher asked a ton of questions, had students copy from an overhead projector while they answered them, and kids in the back were totally disengaged and were spoken to a few times.
After your observation, stay and speak with them. Thank them for teaching that lesson, and give praise for anything in the room noticeable. Ask if they’d come by in a week, and you’ll chat about the lesson, but leave them knowing that you were positive about it. You start your relationship with that very move.
Step two, is identifying what you think are major areas for concern — all of them. In the example above, you have a teacher centered, one style of delivery fits all, lesson taught where half the class were following, and half of that half were maybe learning something. This teacher could use some motivation to maybe want to get better, by seeing how some others do it. Are they aware of their statistics? Do they know about the attendance trends? If they do not, it’s your fault, so don’t go pointing the finger elsewhere.
In your identification process, outline the areas that you think the teacher could focus on from that lesson, and based on your evidence collected. Then, a major way to obtain success in step two, is by meeting with that teacher and finding out what they think they need help with.
You would be surprised as to what teachers will say — and it’s most times, something in the area you were thinking as well.
If they think they are perfect, show them that the school goals revolve around improving the school survey, and the school is trying to improve attendance, and we’re doing so by observing best practices of some of the teachers that are really strong in this area. Through that peer to peer observation — you have to work with your teacher in determining what they see in comparison to themself, and literally with them determine that either lesson planning is the issue, or not knowing heterogeneous grouping or prearranged grouping in persistent means of delivery can reinvent how effective content is taught and endured.
You may find that differentiation is an issue, and perhaps the teacher could benefit from learning about the different ways students learn, and foster a fusion of some note taking with some multimedia approaches to learning, with interactive quizzes and different forms of assessments that maybe are even offered as a list of choices — now you’re getting somewhere.
Identify your main areas to focus on, and move to step three: write the areas, as goals — with your teacher.
Again, I stress that they should be measurable, obtainable, perhaps broken into small parts that make a whole, and should have a schedule for follow up that is on going.
Using the above, here’s one that I would write:
Goal #1 — To improve attendance in period 1 and period 7 by 5% by the spring of the following school year.
Goal #2 — To decrease incident rates in all classes by 25% by the spring of the following school year.
With these two goals, you and your teacher, embark upon step four — which is to determine what are the routes that should be taken, to obtain those goals. With regards to Goal #1 — to increase attendance, we could look at engagement and how content is delivered. The theory is, if we make class worth attending, students won’t miss it. If you are an administrator that programs students, you will know the quality teachers by the course request size of their classes. With the teacher, we find that learning how to facilitate a more student centered classroom environment, can really change the game for that teacher — let’s label that a route for us to go down. In fact, it may even help focus on Goal #2 as well, so we know we’re on the right track.
You also bring up knowing the different learning styles of students in the class, will maximize their ability to enable student comprehension, because they’ll be teaching in ways that all students learn, not just some. You can label this as learning to differentiate instruction and your second route that you’ll need to have to explore in order to obtain your goals.
Tip — you can add more goals as you progress down this path with your teacher, and since you’ve created all of the areas of concern in the beginning steps, you may find that trying to tackle too much will send the wrong message. Also, based on your established goals, which are most certainly going to impact teaching and learning tremendously with your teacher, you may find that a few additional areas will be rectified with that teacher indirectly, which is an added bonus — so nice hypothetical job!
And last, and possibly the most important step in this process of writing professional development plans for teachers, create a timeline for check in with the teacher, to facilitate the process that the teacher goes through, in trying to meet the goals. Here, you add a few weeks to identify possible teachers that can help and set up introductions for peer to peer mentor-like meetings.
In those first few weeks you’re also looking for outside avenues for instructional support — like emailing thetravelingprincipal@gmail.com and seeing if he can help you with differentiating instruction methods for teachers or creating student centered classrooms.
In that timeline, project when you’d want that teacher to be actively involved in seeking this assistance for PD outside, and for meeting with other staff. Also, and a trick to the trade, put in a “You invite me to an observation” and the teacher gets to show off what they are learning to you, and it’s like bragging if done correctly. In the timeline, determine the frequency of your meetings, and benchmarks for progress checks, so by the year’s end we will know if the teacher’s attendance has moved or incidents reported are different. Your plan can be added to or adjusted at that time completely.
To review, Step 1 — Get involved. You will find where to begin by fusing who your staff is, with results, with observations, and with their own feedback. Here is the “who” part of your plan.
Step 2 — Identify the major areas of concern to focus on. Based on all of your evidence collected, begin to categorize what aspects of that teacher you can define as the foundation for improvement. This is the “what” part of your plan.
Step 3 — Write the major areas of focus as goals with your teacher. Make sure that the goals are SMART goals or measurable, obtainable, and timely.
Step 4 — Determine what the routes are for supporting the achievement of these goals. Based on your areas of focus which are fundamental to the enhancement of curriculum and instruction for that teacher, how do you both go about supporting that improvement? This is the “how” part of your plan.
Step 5 — Create a timeline of this process from where you are currently, to the end result as dictated in your goal(s). Map out when you’ll identify programs and make intros, times you can both see other teachers, dates for completion of programs sought, and times for follow up observations and additional meetings. The last of which, is at the predicted time of your goal. This is the “when” part of your plan.
Your style of the plan should be a google doc, shared and editable by both parties.
Your format could come as customizable as you’d need it to be, but the process of following the steps, with your teachers, from beginning to end — fosters the definition of who you are as their supervisor.
Your professional development plan should be seen as one that will lead to a more successful educator, not one that could end in termination. If your teacher doesn’t achieve their goal, how can you revise support? What haven’t you tried yet? How else can you define help for that person with that need?
What is most important, is that you dive in and begin with that crucial step 1, and get involved with your staff and the learning that’s going on, asap. Using the steps above will ensure that the process you do follow is fair, purposeful, achievable, and best for the students at the school.
