It's hard to imagine a simple five-step process that could integrate all of Learning Forward's seven professional learning standards, yet, that is exactly what Janice Bradley has done in the book, Designing Schools for Meaningful Professional Learning. The book outlines a practical, step-by-step professional learning process that embraces teacher engagement and choice. It also connects the content of professional learning with teacher evaluation frameworks while also focusing on student learning and engagement. It's backed by solid research and on-the-ground experience in four schools.
I especially appreciated the description of a whole school strategy in which faculty members come to consensus on five essential instructional strategies that need to be included in every classroom every day. Those strategies are then aligend with the Teacher Evaluation framework, which creates a common goal for the whole school, a set of powerful faculty practices, and a strategy that assists teachers to prepare for skills required in their new evaluation system. Powerful!
Bradley's book provides a practical, realistic framework for authentic job-embedded professional learning which also includes peer collaboration and attention to student needs diagnosed through the use of data. Most importantly, it compels schools to engage eachers in designing and implementing their own professional devleopment, and builds the self-efficacy needed, especially now, from all educators. -- Patricia Roy, Senior Consultant
I've never experienced professional learning such as this! Taking part in collaborative learning with my team gave me the opportunity to explore questions and curiosities about my students that have been buried in years of district-driven professional development. Now my colleagues and I research and reflect together in order to create a learning environment every child deserves.
A part of me, teacher as researcher, that I thought was dead came alive through this experience. I look at teaching and learning differently now that I have experienced professional learning as it should be. I am now continuously reflecting with my colleagues on how we can maximize student learning.
-- Kathryn Million, Teacher - First Grade Dual Language
As a principal of an elementary school, it is crucial that professional learning is meaningful and impacts staff and student learning. The Five-Part Plan (FPP) provided us a simple, yet very impactful structure to focus on professional learning. It led to student learning through teacher choice and voice, collaborative work time, classroom implementation, feedback and follow-through with a shared Learning Showcase at the end of the year. It is incredibly powerful to see teachers learning and collaborating with each other, providing each other feedback, restructuring and refining instruction, and seeing their efforts result in increased student learning. For me, the beauty of the FPP is that I now have a structure to provide any theme of professional learning. For example, our current FPP will focus on the critical areas in CCSS Mathematics. Next year our FPP focus may be oral language development. As teachers become familiar with this process, we begin to build a culture where learning is our focus no matter whether you are the student or the adult. Teachers become excited about professional learning because they have choice, they are learning from each other, it directly impacts their practices, their classrooms, and their students.
The bonus to FPP was that it directly related to our new system of teacher evaluation for our state. Many of the state's criteria for professional learning and responsbilities were directly tied to our FPP. Through the evaluative process we also saw the results of the teachers working through the FPP in their instruction and student learning. For example, one group of teachers asked me to do an observation during their FPP process. I observed teachers planning together, observing each other, and providing feedback to each other. I then observed the second group of teachers teach the same lesson, but with lessons learned from what was taught by the first group of teachers. The process was incredibly powerful with teachers learning about their instruction as well as the increased quality of student learning. There was not an area of the evaluation observation protocol that was not touched by this process.
I will continue to use the FPP for professional learning in the future, in new schools, and new environments because of its powerful simplicity and because of the results I have experienced through using the plan.
-- Christa Vaudrey, Principal
So often teachers in our educational systems are left out of the decision-making that concerns their own practice as teachers. Yet we know that teachers learn each day in the classroom and that they learn through conversations they have with colleagues about practice. Further, we know that their learning is actually transferred to classroom practice when that learning is job-embedded and teachers have choice in the content. Janice shows us ways to do this that are doable and manageable in every school. This book guides us in processes that work and inspire us to always keep learning. -- Janet Dunham, MC2 Math Field Specialist
