I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it. — Pablo Picasso
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Every Tuesday the faculty at Gratts Elementary in Los Angeles gathers to discuss schoolwide instructional strategies. |
The typical district approach to professional development is to bring in an outside expert with the latest seven-point plan for a quick fix or one-size-fits-all solution. Unfortunately, it seldom provides teachers with the information and strategies they want or need to succeed.
"Teachers are not in control of their professional development," says Terri Jackson, chair of the CTA Educational Change Workgroup. "They don't have a choice."
"Over the years, professional development programs put together by districts have been a deadly turnoff to anyone trying to improve," says Larry Carlin, the CTA Board liaison to the workgroup. "They're so boring that teachers fall asleep. School districts have to start offering something that can really be put to use in the classroom."
True professional development means teachers working together collaboratively to improve instruction and help students meet state standards. It also means choosing what kind of support will help them best meet the needs of their students.
"For new teachers, the challenge is to prepare them to teach in a standards-based environment and support them in their efforts to focus on student learning," says workgroup member Kathy Harris, a regional director of the California Reading and Literature Project.
"Teachers are professionals," adds Harris. "They need to be able to use their knowledge, skills, preparation and professional development in the classroom to make decisions. I think CTA may be one of the only organizations fighting for that."
The workgroup is recommending that CTA work with higher education to improve teacher preparation programs and develop a "professional practice model" through which teachers can share "best practices" and collaborate during the school day.
In addition, it recommends adopting the National Development Council's standards for professional development, which include:
- Context standards — Organizing educators into learning communities whose goals are aligned with those of the school and district.
- Process standards — Instructing educators in how to use data-driven strategies to monitor student progress and help sustain continuous improvement.
- Content standards — Providing educators with training designed to deepen their subject-area content knowledge.
Too many schools provide little or no orientation and leave teachers feeling isolated from their colleagues, says Susan M. Johnson, author of Finders and Keepers: Helping New Teachers Survive and Thrive in Our Schools. "When schools don't pay attention to new teachers, there's a real possibility that they will become bankers."
When CTA President Barbara E. Kerr addresses a gathering of teachers, she often asks for a show of hands as to how many are new to the profession. Within the next five to 10 years, she tells them, they will likely find themselves the "senior teachers" at their school sites as nearly half the teaching force is reaching retirement age.
Unfortunately, many teachers don't make it to retirement. Thirteen percent of new teachers leave public schools by the end of their second year and 22 percent leave by the end of their fourth year.
"As a result, a quarter of new hires every year simply replace departing new teachers, and this turnover will be more challenging in the future as more experienced teachers reach retirement age," notes the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) study, "Retention of New Teachers in California."
It's even worse in inner-city schools, according to statistics from the National Education Assocation. Nearly 50 percent of new teachers in urban districts leave the profession during their first five years.
Investing in professional development is a cost-effective way to increase teacher retention, says the PPIC study. During the 1990s, the Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment (BTSA) program improved elementary school teacher retention by 26 percent.
While BTSA remains funded today, other support programs have been "dramatically reduced," according to the study.
The Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning corroborates the PPIC finding. In 2003-04, total allocations for major teacher professional development programs — the California Subject Matter Projects; the California Professional Development Institutes; the Mathematics and Reading Professional Development Program; and the Peer Assistance and Review Program — dropped from $222 million to approximately $62 million.
"California's cutbacks to teacher professional development place the state on a collision course with rising expectations for student achievement and raise serious concerns for California's students, especially those who are underperforming," notes the center's report, "A Collision Course: High Expectations for Students, Low Investment in Teacher Training."
It's a tragedy that today's professional development has become one-dimensional, says Harris. She'd like to see it expanded to include more content knowledge instead of being focused on how to follow certain types of curriculum models and strict pacing guides, which dictate what pages teachers should cover on specific days.
"Most of the professional development these days has a very narrow view of teachers," she says.
"The curriculum is usually the most important thing, and teachers and students come second. The message is, 'If we could just get teachers to teach what's in the book, everything would be fine.'
"I think teaching is much more than that."
