Individualized Professional Development

"Change is difficult, not changing is Fatal!"

Much of 21st century education philosophy urges instructors/teachers to meet the needs of their students by creating authentic learning experiences. To do so, one must take the time to understand their students, their needs, learning styles, and talents. As many instructors/teachers have become excellent at adapting their content and lessons, institutions and educational systems as a whole are lagging behind in providing a similar experience for their instructors/teachers. 

I can only imagine how many hands would be raised if asked, "How many of you recently sat through a school-wide training, that offered very little practical use to your professional development needs?" Institutions across America feel the need to prescribe 'canned' professional development to all instructors/teachers to ensure the same content and message are delivered. What if that message isn't needed by EVERYONE? What happened to the exact message we are preaching to instructors/teachers about creating unique learning experiences? Shouldn't the same apply to adults?

Clearly, the answer is yes - we must do a better job of meeting our instructors/teachers needs. While the answer is easy to see, the solution is a greater challenge that all learning institutions must be willing to tackle. Individualized Professional Development requires a great deal of collaboration, brainstorming, communication, planning, knowledge of instructor/teacher needs, and TRUST! As learning institutions begin to explore and implement Individualized Professional Development, students will begin to see and feel the impact on their educational success.

Individualized Professional Development may look at feel different across learning institutions, however, the main goal should always be to identify opportunities for growth, while supporting instructors/teachers in a growth mindset. In order to identify and support a growth mindset, learning institutions must create a culture of reflection, evaluation, and growth. Too often, institutions of learning and instructors/teachers are too concerned about looking 'good' in the eyes of the stakeholders (i.e. Administrators, principals, parents, students, accrediting bodies, etc.) We must make a dramatic shift in looking at deficiencies as opportunities for growth!

One of the greatest examples of a growth mindset can come from sports. How many top-notch athletes do you see that don't look at how to improve? Most athletes identify their areas of weakness and build them into strengths. Instructors/teachers ought to have the same mindset - what am I not good at and how can I improve? Only then can instructors/teachers begin to create a unique, Individualized Professional Development plan.

Perhaps one of the greatest tools to instructors/teachers in improvement will be through instructional coaches. Instructional Coaching fosters a rapport between coach and instructor/teacher, creating a safe learning environment, and opening the door for opportunities of growth. The instructional coach becomes and outside eye and ear in the classroom to aid the instructor/teacher in identify strengths and opportunities for growth in a collaborative nature. Provided the instructional coach remains unbiased - a non-evaluative observer - an Individualized Professional Development plan will begin to unfold over time.

So what's the dilemma? Time and resources continue to be stretched. Yet, Individualized Professional Development will only foster instructors/teachers to become reflective practitioners. If it's good for our students, then it needs to be good for our instructors/teachers. I fear this is only going to become of greater need as funding and state laws alter whom is deemed eligible to be an instructor/teacher (sorry, I'm from Wisconsin!) Just as Ghandi once said, "Be the change you wish to see in the world."  

Students Don't Do Optional?

At many colleges across the nation, much discussion is being had regarding student responsibility and self-motivation in achieving the highest 'grade' possible in any given course. As the majority of students in higher ed are adults (by age only!), many instructors believe the responsibility for learning falls squarely on the shoulders of the student. While one can argue that not many employers would hire an unmotivated student, the purpose of this blog will take a different spin by looking at what instructors can do to promote learning in their courses.

As you are reading this, there is inevitably an instructor somewhere on the globe assigning a massive reading assignment to his or her students, "Please read pages 45 - 110 by Monday!" Many students will skim through the reading, trying to grasp at what main highlights, while some students will read the entire selection and take copious notes to be well prepared for class. And of course, there any many that will never pick up the book or even go and buy it, know all too well the instructor will fail in checking whether students read the text or not.

Many of the struggles regarding 'optional' for students comes in the form of lack of engagement with 'optional' assignment by the instructor. We've all encountered the above instructor, only to come to class to either hear our instructor lecture about what we just read, or never assess what we learned from the material we read - not just simply giving us a quiz to 'prove' we learned. Even an elephant can tell you how to climb a tree!

Therefore, the challenge falls solely on the instructor to find and create unique opportunities for using the optional assignment to show students how valuable and important the information was. For instance, using any number of text protocols in small group discussions provides students an opportunity to reflect in a wide variety of ways; assumptions author made, arguments against the author's words, agreements with the author, and aspirations on how the information can be used in students' lives. That's a small sample of questions that engage students in their reading. Providing case studies or hands-on application of material learned prior to class will ensure that students WANT TO do optional to be prepared for class and the 'FUN' activities that are designed.

While it's often easy to point the finger of blame at someone else -  in this case students - we must often take a long, hard look at what we are doing to help students progress in their learning. Are we providing the best learning environment for students and modeling the expectations we have set forth? The challenge is to push students to ask the difficult questions, to be willing to wrestle with the difficult task, and to face adversity head on, overcoming anything thrown at them. We must teach our students to problem solve, think critically, analyze, and evaluate more frequently to prepare them for what the world has to offer!