Professional Development

 Professional Development

Professional development is learning to earn or maintain professional credentials such as academic degrees to formal coursework, attending conferences, and informal learning opportunities situated in practice. It has been described as intensive and collaborative, ideally incorporating an evaluative stage. Wikipedia

One of my most memorable moments from my experience working with my students, was final placement this past year. At the end of my teaching blocks I like to ask the students for feedback, and this one girl in grade 9 said that the only reason that she took the class was so that she could get her phys ed credit out of the way and that she really doesn't enjoy gym class, but through our time together she was able to enjoy her time in the class and that she found that she was looking forward to coming to the class and it taught her that she actually liked being active. 

In addition, at the end of the week I like to give the students a small reflective task that is designed to work on their mental health as part of their health curriculum, and when the one girl handed in one of her assignments she thanked me for the reflective tasks as they were helping her to improve her mental health and she was noticing the changes that it was inspiring in her. 

To me these are the best moments as a teacher. Those moments when we realize that the students are getting it and they are getting something out of what we are teaching to them, no matter what the subject matter is that we are teaching. Taking the time to build those relationships and connections with our students is so important because if our students aren't engaged in what they are learning or inspired by the teacher then they are just going to show up to say they were there. And it is not something that takes time, my final placement was just 10 weeks long with March break in the middle of it and I had enough time to connect with the students, change their minds, and allow them to become open to the material that I was teaching to them. 

But this all stems from where our mindset is going into the classroom. I often say, and I cannot remember where I heard it from to credit it, but the minute we think we know everything is the minute we know nothing. In education I find this to be true, which is why I believe that teachers should be generalists rather then specialists. 

It is through continued professional development that we as educators are able to grow and evolve our pedagogy to ensure that our students are receiving the most authentic education that they can. For example, I didn't think I wanted to teach special education classes but through my placement I had the opportunity to work with special needs students and found that I enjoyed it so much I wanted to take my Special Education Part 1 AQ course. I don't overly like this phrase, but we don't know what we don't know, and this is what leads us to assumptions and complacency. Sugata Mitra explains this concept really well through his action research that he completed with computers and children in India. Assumptions were made that the students in his research disputed, and it is these assumptions that can cause us to become poor educators. As Sugata says, we have an ironic problem...good teachers are not wanting to go to these remote locations that need them, and ultimately these are the areas that show the most need to improved education. 

Ophea is a governing body for Health and Physical Education. They provide e-learning as well as webinars on the many different topics that are looked at in the H&PE curriculum. One of the things that I like about the way they are organized is that when you look to register for a webinar it lets you know what grade level and target audience for each so that you can determine if it is the right one for you. 

In addition, the National Strength and Conditioning Association is who I have earned my Strengths and Conditioning Specialist certification through, and even prior to COVID, they had an online version of courses so that someone could remotely attend, however through COVID they have now allowed for their conferences to be virtual as well as face to face so for someone like myself in Niagara Falls Ontario I can now attend the National Conference that is being held in Orlando. 

I think that the concept on a MOOC is amazing! As I mentioned with the NSCA conference, it now makes it feasible for me to attend a conference that I am interested in going to, without having to fork over a whole lot of money that I most likely will not see again. It can help to personalize professional development for teachers as well because they don't have to be as selective with their PD. They can attend conferences from around the world, or not have to take time off of work to attend the conference. It makes the process more enjoyable as they can have much more freedom in their course selections allowing them to do professional development that they want to do on top of what is mandatory. 

If I were to facilitate or support a MOOC in my school or district I think that the topic would be related to the concept of how social media use can help to facilitate learning in our classrooms. I think that social media is one of those constructs that is caught in an inbetween place right now. There are several more senior educators who avoid the topic because they don't understand it and/or see it's potential...and then there are the younger educators who have embraced it in their own lives and recognize that our students are going to use it so we should encourage that they are being safe when using it.

Please see the Ontario Ministry of Education guidelines on professional development. In addition, as a Standard of Practice through the Ontario College of Teachers...ongoing professional learning is integral to effective practice and to student learning. Professional practice and self-directed learning are informed by experience, research, collaboration and knowledge.