“… To foster such discussions, professional development leaders must help teachers to establish trust, develop communication norms that enable critical dialogue, and maintain a balance between respecting individual community members and critically analyzing issues in their teaching (Frykholm, 1998; Seago, 2004).  

This week I ran a workshop for my group at K. I was pleasantly surprised beforehand that so many of the participants did writing activities in their classrooms and sent me examples of student texts.

After thanking those that made the effort to send me material for the workshop, I explained that our aim is to learn from the students’ writing and to experience examining texts looking through “positive glasses” and not through the “groan, spelling mistake, terrible writing…” glasses. Our aim was to look at what the students KNOW about writing, rather than point out heir problems. I asked the teachers to treat the work of their colleagues with sensitivity and respect.

The workshop wasn’t bad and I had plenty of positive feedback from the participants but after reading the article by Borko, yesterday, I understood something that is starkly missing in the course – a real feeling of being a learning community. I can’t really blame the size of the group or the participants because in N the same situation exists (though less so).

I must spend a lot of time and energy at the beginning of the course forming a group, gaining trust from the teachers, hearing far more from them about what happens in their classrooms. I must also think hard to determine ways that the online section of the course (which incidentally has more discussion between the teachers themselves on their practice – through the use of teaching narratives) can help foster trust and security within the group.

I am worried that one of the teachers felt badly about the way questions were asked and the way others saw the work of her students. I have made a note to talk to her. I read here yesterday that if teachers come to a course sure that their practice is perfect, no learning will take place. It is my responsibility to help those teachers on their road to questioning and learning.

I used to give one teacher 15 minutes or so of each meeting to present something she does in her classroom. This was always popular with the participants but the time given was really was only to share ideas. I never dared use the time for the teacher to raise dilemmas or share difficulties or for the participants and I to critically evaluate the ideas or practices for the benefit of everyone’s learning.

This is an area which definitely deserves more thought and discussion.

That’s it for now…

Borko, H. (2004). Professional development and teacher learning: Mapping the terrain [Electronic version]. Educational Researcher, 33(3), 3-15.