Some of my worst experiences as a teacher have been suffering through boring and redundant professional developments pushed out from the district personnel stepping down from their ivory tower. That’s why I wanted to make sure any PD I delivered was at least going to be FUN!!!! Teachers, administrators, and other school staff should walk away inspired and excited about getting back into the classroom with some strategies they can use tomorrow. Great coaches ensure this at every encounter.
Great coaches are skilled at assessing what their audience needs and what skills their audience has acquired as a result of their training. Every PD should start with some form of baseline assessment to ensure the information is what the audience needs. This can be done with a survey or other formative assessments. Google forms are great tools to make this quick and efficient. Knowing where your audience is will help you know what information you should dig deeper and what information you can glance over.
Great coaches are also skilled at making the information come to life with real-life experiences coupled with some light-hearted humor. You have to make it real for the audience and how what you have worked for what they see every day in their classroom. They make the audience feel compelled to learn this skill to answer the problem they will have when little JImmy walks through their door tomorrow.
Lastly, great coaches have a way of empowering their audience with repeated practice of this new skill so they now have confidence in what they’ve learned. They walk away saying yes, I can do this, and I now have a great new skill in my toolbox. This was one of the best PD’s I’ve been to in a long time. They leave saying “Let’s Go Coach, We can change the world!!!!
