To Develop

One of my students’ first vocabulary words this term was “develop.” The definitions listed included: to grow or cause to grow, to become more advanced, and to add chemicals to a photograph in order to reveal the image. (After a brief discussion about “the olden days” I did not require that they learn this final anachronism.)

To grow. To become more advanced.

Throughout my career I have tried to do just that, and for the majority of years it has felt like an uphill trudge. Early on I was responsible for seeking out opportunities, enrolling in programs, applying for funding, and then praying that my students did something productive with an unknown substitute teacher while I was gone. I have attended courses on language-based learning disabilities, classes on classroom management, workshops on implementing Writing Workshop. All of these Professional Development opportunities had three things in common: First, after each one I left with a curious sensation of feeling simultaneously inspired and defeated. Second, they were all lead by former teachers who had suspiciously left the teaching profession for this obviously easier job. And third, they all started with a continental breakfast including Jelly Danish. I usually picked up a few good tools or tricks that I would apply for a few weeks back in my classroom with varying fidelity, but inevitably the crisp binders with power point print outs and complimentary note paper I acquired at each one gathered dust on my crowded PD bookshelf. Any advancement I managed to achieve was through sweat and experience in the classroom, and not from sitting in a cold hotel conference room with my feet propped up.

All schools acknowledge the need for Professional Development and work it into the calendar year. If you are a parent of a child in public school, as I am, you have inevitably confronted those enigmatic “PD Days” when there is no school despite the lack of a holiday, and you have cursed under your breath, as I have, while scrambling for daycare and hoping the teachers were doing something really useful, goddamnit. 

The charter school where I now work made a brilliant decision before it opened its doors. It would inconvenience families upfront and often by sending students home at 1:30 every Wednesday. The staff stays until 5 pm and participates in mandatory, synchronized Professional Development sessions. In addition, there are a few days a year when our students stay at home, and we become the students. We have a leadership team of two principals, three vice principals, two instructional coaches, and a Director of Special Education, among others, who spend a good part of each week designing these experiences for us. It is understood as fact that the role of our administration is to guide and support us as educators, which takes a lot of time and effort. From my perspective, it’s worth it.

Each PD session begins with reciting our mission and our instructional focus for the year. While chanting in unison with my colleagues, I feel like I am in church, or participating in a massive brain washing exercise. But either way it is a comfortable feeling of relief. I am not alone. There is a master plan. I do not have to figure this out for myself.

 Today was one of those confounded, blessed PD days. There was no continental breakfast, all of our instructors are still working actively in our classrooms, and I left feeling optimistic and invigorated. We learned about how to support our English Language Learners in the classroom, participated in a literacy lesson about making inferences, and were given time to plan with our grade level teams. I barely made a dent in my long list of things to accomplish on this day off, but on Tuesday, after this long weekend, I think I may be one baby step closer to “advanced.”