Professional learning “as is” doesn’t work. We bombard adult learners with help, but it is not helpful. Why do we continue to pretend that the sit-and-get PL model works?
What would it look like if we could give teachers something that does?
The Story Behind the Story
Spinning Their Wheels
As I mentioned in my video, I used to try to enter workshop-style professional learning with a positive attitude and a learner’s heart. I would go in thinking, “Even if this is awful, I will learn at least one new idea to implement in my classroom.” If you think about it, learning about one new concept without trying it over the course of eight hours is an enormous waste of time. It astounded me when I read in the Mirage (TNTP, 2015) that
- Districts think they know what meaningful professional development looks like,
- They invest a great deal of money in professional learning, but
- Professional learning is ineffective.
Teacher Learning Trumps Everything
When you think about the fact that the greatest factor in student achievement is teacher quality, I question why our system isn’t meeting the needs of adult learners. In fact, after five years teacher growth plateaus (TNTP, 2015). Moreover, this growth is attributed to the natural learning curve (TNTP, 2015). My own teaching experience is wrought with change. For example, every five years, I felt an itch to do something different. Reflecting back, this is traced to the lack of growth I experienced after five years in each teaching position. In RSA Animate: Drive (Stephenson et al., 2010), Pink narrates that once a living wage is met, workers look for three qualities in their profession: Autonomy, mastery, and purpose. It is no wonder that most teachers leave after five years – no one wants to keep working in a job where they have plateaued.
My presentation describes a solution to the problem: How might we improve professional learning in GCISD so that we are investing in the most valuable resource for student success?
How-to: Creating My Call to Action
Theory
As I planned this assignment, I started with Nancy Duarte’s work. In her TED Talk Nancy Duarte Uncovers Common Structure of Greatest Communicators, Duarte (2010) discusses the power of story. Because of this, in my presentation, I draw on several personal experiences to speak to the hearts of my audience. I also use a lot of visual language so that the audience can become the “hero” of the story by proxy. Duarte (2010) also uncovers the structure of the greatest communicators, a shape called the sparkline.
The Sparkline
The sparkline compares the current conditions to what could be (Duarte, 2010). Notably, this pattern appeared in such great speeches as Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech and Steve Job’s introduction to the iPhone (Duarte, 2010). When I planned my presentation, I started with a data table so I could organize my thoughts. In the data table, I included a column for “What is” and “What could be.” Then, I arranged stories and facts into each of these columns. Finally, I turned those notes into a script, toggling between “What is” and “What could be,” ending everything with a New Bliss.
Once I wrote my script, I moved on to the visual elements of the presentation. I knew I wanted to use the concepts I learned from How to Avoid Death By PowerPoint (Phillips, 2014) and How Presentation Zen Fixed My Bad PowerPoints (Jennifer, 2013). Some concepts I incorporated into my presentation with intentionality include
- Single images or images with text.
- Minimalist text on a slide.
- Images instead of words to represent ideas.
- One idea per slide.
- Animations of images and text.
For example, when I described the four findings from The Mirage (TNTP, 2015), I represented each of the findings with an image that appeared and then disappeared. These visuals represent the ideas, which my audience can easily remember with the mention of a graphic.
Skills
To gather images, I relied heavily on Canva. I knew that I wanted to do my voiceover in iMovie. Because Keynote and iMovie “play well together,” I used my skills with Keynote to create transitions and animations. Then, I exported my text slides from Keynote and my images from Canva. I put everything together in iMovie. Finally, I added the voiceover in iMovie based on the script I created in Google Docs.
It is my belief that between the Five Qualities of Effective Professional Development and implementing superior presentation skills, teacher professional learning can move from What is to a New Bliss. I look forward to instituting growth in Grapevine-Colleyville ISD.
References
Duarte, N. (2010, December 10). TEDxEast – Nancy Duarte Uncovers Common Structure of Greatest Communicators. YouTube. Retrieved April 10, 2022, from https://youtu.be/1nYFpuc2Umk
Gulamhussein, A. (2013). Teaching the Teachers Effective Professional Development in an Era of High Stakes Accountability. Center for Public Education. http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/system/files/2013-176_ProfessionalDevelopment.pdf
Jennifer, G. (2013, September 16). How Presentation Zen Fixed My Bad PowerPoints. YouTube. Retrieved April 10, 2022, from https://youtu.be/vkrl1j0IW-c
King Rice, J. (2003). Teacher Quality: Understanding the Effectiveness of Teacher Attributes. Economic Policy Institute. https://www.epi.org/publication/books_teacher_quality_execsum_intro/
Phillips, D. J. (2014, April 14). How to Avoid Death By PowerPoint | David JP Phillips | TEDxStockholmSalon. YouTube. Retrieved April 10, 2022, from https://youtu.be/Iwpi1Lm6dFo
Stephenson, A., Park, A., & Pink, D. (2010, April 1). RSA Animate: Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. YouTube. Retrieved April 10, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc
TNTP. (2015). The Mirage. TNTP. https://tntp.org/assets/documents/TNTP-Mirage_2015.pdf