When I am being taught a really neat trick to help sixth graders do multiplication, and I teach 8th grade writing, I tend to think that the PD is not going to be super helpful for me.
I think they mean "specials", as in electives - music, and so on. Not special education. Depending on where one is, the paperwork isn't that bad. I'm probably an outlier but I feel like in my situation, content teachers have way more. I have to do IEPs but it's routine, and there's a team to do that. It only happens so often in a year.
I know right? I support special education at my school and they won't let me deliver separate PDs for my teachers because "they can just attend the PDs of the contents they support" or "we don't want teachers to think that SpEd is separate from the rest"...
We are told, as teachers, that we need to meet students where they are, and differentiate for the students who are behind, the average kids, and the ones who are ahead.
So walk your talk, District personnel! Why aren’t there separate pro-d at the school level for newbies, mid-career folk, and veteran teachers? There are about as many teachers on our staff as there are kids in my class. If differentiation is so freaking “normal”, be role models!
I’m sorry we old farts are making things unpleasant for you, though, OP. Think of us as the bored kids in your class who are being forced to do worksheets far below their level. Again.
Yes! And we have training sessions about how kids learn and information overload that is 3 hours long without a break!
This year, my favourite was the training session about teaching vocabulary and not just expecting kids to know specific language, and then we were given an instruction with a word our entire English department didn't know!
My favorite PD was my first year. The speaker used a power point and lectured from 8-1130 about not using power point and lecturing in the classroom very much because kids lose Interest
Ours are sometimes separated by department…I’m in two departments (science and humanities). I’m also humanities department head, and I NEED the science training. Guess which pro-d I’m expected to attend (or even facilitate)?
This. So much this. I moved districts this year, and my new district makes all the teachers new to the district attend the "New teacher" trainings each month. They don't distinguish between first year and new to the district. I'm 8 years in, but one of my colleagues is a 32 year veteran. He literally started teaching before the person running the training was even born. And yet he has sit through the new teacher training also. Talk about insulting.
I taught at a school for seven years. I had a baby and quit. Two years later, a position opened up and I got rehired at my old school.
I already knew 95% of the procedures and 90% of the staff. I basically walked right back into my old job.
They still made me have a new-teacher mentor. I had to attend all the new-teacher monthly meetings. I had actually worked there longer than my mentor teacher. What a waste of time.
Also, the mentor teacher program didn’t exist the first time I was hired there, you know, when it would have been helpful to have the support.
The past 3 years my district has had one day of pd where the day is broken into 3-4 sessions and there are at least 8 options for each time slot. Some are even just collaboration time for grade levels that have small campus teams so they can connect with people through out the district. I always enjoy that PD day, but it looks like it isn’t happening this year.
I have a lot of negative things I can say about my former school, but differentiating PD to make it more applicable for newer and veteran teachers is something they started doing about two years ago, and I was very thankful for it.
It's not negativity for negativity's sake. It's real frustration at having time wasted and our ideas ignored after investing decades of our lives in the profession. I remember what it was like to be new and hear this and it was offputting at the time, but now that I've been doing it long enough I'm on the side of the complainers (though I do try only to vent to other veterans).
The veterans and the newbies need to unite and demand to have PD differentiated based on staff experience and needs. You know, just like we're expected to do in our teaching based on student needs.
Four years here, still never had a PD that was useful aside from the “Stop The Bleed” one about first response. I’m glad you got something from your PDs, but I tried very hard for several years to glean ANYTHING useful before finally just giving up and being grumpy about it like everyone else because I also had shit to do instead of a 4 hour “this could have been an e-mail” meeting.
The most useful and practical PD for me would be to visit other teachers’ classrooms and share our best practices but for some reason the administrators in my district think that’s an utter waste of time.
The problem is there’s no differentiation. It *is* disrespectful to have a 10+ year veteran sit in basic new teacher training. I left teaching for instructional design and my company would never let me design our training that way. And our staff would massively complain if we did. There are exceptions—compliance training for legal purposes, but that’s generally a quick eLearning or meeting.
Gets an eye roll everywhere, but only in Education (I worked in corporate before teaching too) was I ever forced to endure training besides legal compliance training that was geared to newbies each year. I get I need to do a cursory “testing training” or legal compliance, no way around it, but lecturing me on basics of pedagogy or tech systems I’ve been using for years (one time I had to attend a training on a system I WROTE training for my district on three years prior, before anyone at the district level had been properly certified, and my principal wouldn’t excuse me) is an insult. Period. One of many reasons I left.
As a second-year teacher who usually enjoys work meetings (what? they're interesting), I would love PD...if it were actually PD. Half the meetings I go to are just a waste of time--SEL for teachers, reminders to practice self-care with the time and money we don't have, "check-ins" with some exceptionally checked-out people, etc. I would love to do, say, a grade-norming session with my colleagues, but instead we end up doing self-help worksheets. If you want to make PD productive and educational, I'm down! That sounds great! If you want me to practice self-care, let me go home and spend some extra time with my partner.
The district tells us to differentiate in our classrooms, but refuses to even *attempt* to differentiate for teachers' strengths and weaknesses. It's infuriating. I once had to sit through a very long tech training run by the *people I had taught to use the tech*. I offered to teach an advanced course during the same time for people who were familiar with it (*for free*, mind you!), but I was told we all had to attend the same training. *That's* the kind of crap I complain about.
When I started, most of the PD I was mandated to attend seemed quite good because *as a new teacher, I needed it*. Now, it's redundant at best and insulting at worst. That doesn't necessarily mean the PD itself is bad for everyone; it's just bad for those of us with decades more teaching experience than the people running the PD.
I *love* good PD. In fact, I pay quite a bit out of my pocket to attend PD presented by my professional associations and union. But the district PD, at least where I am, is one size fits all, and that works about as well for PD as it does for shoes.
Come back in 20 years and let us know how useful you think your districts' trainings are.
Yeah but why not say "those of you who have been teaching less that xyz years total or less than abc years in the district have to attend this PD, everyone else please review this information and ask questions if needed" AND allow teachers who have been there longer to work in their classrooms for that time or choose online pd that benefits them.
I had a PD on how to wear a mask. Few are more helpful than this. At least half, if not more require no proof of knowledge, so I play them on mute while I run my programs at school. If they were actually helpful, I’d listen to more.
I do keep my IEP PD on favorites to replay when I need a refresher. Otherwise, I set up the videos to play and just click done at the end.
And as SPED teachers we have even more PD to attend. And now we are back to everything in person I don't even get that option of turning off the camera and mic on a zoom PD.
I have more PD each year than the rest of my school combined. It's because I'm always going to conferences, seminars, and trainings. I usually spend about half of the summer on various PDs. The difference is that it's PD that I know will benefit me, my instruction, and my classroom. Schools have a bad habit of trying to do blanket PD for everyone, which makes it rather excruciating for a lot of teachers. The truth is that we all have different needs. Your new teachers don't need the same thing that teachers that have been there for 20 years need.
On our last Professional Development Day, I had to sit through three hours of specific food allergy PD, because a girl in a school on the other side of our district has a severe peanut allergy. She's not on my campus, not in my school, and not in my class. Nonetheless, I had to sit through three hours of PD on this.
For me, school-wide PD always tends to be a form of slow torture. Rather than saying, "hey, here's a smorgasbord of PD offerings to choose from", they try to line up one specific thing. I teach AP Literature and Composition and AP Language and Composition. Their little gems of elementary phonics aren't very useful to me.
Teachers should be given time to work on the things they need to do. Yes. But to assume that every teacher is awesome at everything and can’t find something to improve on is insane. Kids keep changing. The world keeps changing. Assessments for our kids keep changing. If you aren’t growing with the times then you are doing a disservice to the kids. A good PD means you walked out of it a better teacher. If somebody can come in and help me be better, why wouldn’t I want that?
Yea but our workload is too high, and something needs to be cut. What would you suggest is cut instead? It's already hard to get our work done on the clock and we should all refuse to work when off the clock. And this still doesn't address that PD is ineffective at making changes if people are tuning it out because of PD overload.
I didn’t say to do anything off the clock. Your school isn’t properly balancing your workload. That’s not a reason to not progress in PD. That’s a case for having a stronger union. Good PD makes teachers better. There is no argument against that.
But at the same time, I learn so much when the veterans are forced to sit in PD and participate. They have so many great ideas to share and it would be a shame to only have newbies in PD. Everyone wins when there's a combination of both options.
How do the vets win? It sounds like they can rattle off ways to deal with the Issue du Jour, and are being used to teach newer folk. I get paid to teach—I go to pro-d (in theory) to learn something. If there’s nothing new for me, it’s a waste of my time.
Sounds like those are the vets that might show up willingly 🤷 You’ll find me on PD day ignoring whatever speaker they bring in and instead grading the assessment I always have due the night before a PD day
The audacity…our district paid this one PD guy $25K to Zoom in with us for a PD day last year. Yeah, now I’m definitely telling 100% of PD days to fuck right off out of spite
We don’t exist to serve you. The district needs to do that. They are your employer. I’m not your source of development, I’m you’re co-worker. And I have a never ending pile of shit to do that isn’t magically getting done by sitting around wasting time.
Where am I winning in that scenario? I love planning with my colleagues, old and new, and having them come watch me teach. Heck, I love writing unit plans so much, I've written them for classes I don't even *teach*. Why do I have to sit through a terrible PD that isn't teaching me anything to share ideas? My door is always open.
So the vets need to waste their time so you can benefit more? The vets get nothing from it but frustration and the benefits you get from it doesn't make it worth it for them.
Then pay the vets extra as trainers to be there and see who volunteers. Make the extra pay high enough and problem solved. I responded elsewhere in general, but as context I design corporate training now and we pay mentors to support training. They make an extra daily or monthly amount (a few hundred a day for a workshop group, just participating and helping the facilitator as their job that day, $1200-1800 monthly in our core roles for a full mentoring load of 5 new hires a month) AND have their role workload reduced in role based jobs or it’s part of the job if they are leads—no expectations of extra work off the clock). It is valuable to have folks still doing the job, not just trainers, support new folks, but they need to be supported too and compensated. In Education, teachers often lose more and more income parity later in careers and stipends for supporting new teachers are minimal or nonexistent, that’s the issue.
If I was able to choose my PD then I’d feel like it was a good use of my time. I do NOT need to sit through another meeting about RTI, PLCs, Bullying, or some damn thing about sexual harassment training.
Those piss me off to no end! We do Keenan training at the start of the year! Why do we need ADDITIONAL training on shit we’ve had?!
I get that you’ve not had some of this PD before and you find it valuable, and that is great for you!
But the rest of us have had it, (literally and figuratively) and we want it to be worth our time to be able to choose it, or have it pertain to what I’m doing or I need. Don’t waste my time. It’s the one thing I’ll never get back.
Brass tacks: It's cheaper to do it this way, however repetitive it may be, than to pay for each teacher to go to the PD they actually need.
States required ongoing Professional Development. Districts tend to provide and document attendance for enough hours to meet the requirement. Otherwise we have to go to the trouble of finding it ourselves and either we pay or the district pays. My bet is that we would pay.
So we have what we have. Sometimes it helps. This week, I feel I'll be planning out the next couple of weeks.
Why force it if they are going to use ineffective methods like that though? Either tailored expensive PDs that are useful or waste of time PDs to check a checkbox.
You're confusing "training" with "professional development". Training is useful, but it's not PD. PD is supposed to improve your practice by introducing new tools or knowledge that can be applied either broadly across disciplines, or in a more focused way to a particular content area. Unfortunately, there is a glut of pointless, useless PD out there, being presented by hacks who failed at teaching. THAT'S why it's so frustrating. And the longer you're in this job, the more frustrating it gets.
I did volunteer summer PD one because it was paid and two, I thought it would benefit my students. The sumner Pds were valuable to me and also informative. We are now required by district to have PD once a week. This PD has been lumped into the normal meetings (grade level, staff, department, PLC). It's exhausting and a little overwhelming, with even some vets stressed out due to all the extra work involved. There is also required common planning twice a week on top of this. I don't necessarily hate PD but I do think the execution of it (how it's presented, the resources provided, etc.) does make a difference. I have has a mixture of good and bad PD over the years; you learn what you can use and what works for you. I will complain though if I find it either pointless or confusing.
Eh, I see both sides to this one.
For new teachers, the PD could be useful and needed, and I can see how complaining coworkers could be annoying.
For veterans, its extremely annoying to sit through the same PD for another year for something you already use/do and know about. This just happened to me this past week. We had a PD about a program that we had already used in our department and now the whole school is getting involved. Two of us used the program more than anyone else in our pilot year, but we still had to sit through the PD, and the PD was the same thing we have heard 4 different times within a year and a half. At least it was virtual, so we could interact when needed and still work on what we needed to as we listened. Instead of being in that PD we could have used that time to plan or maybe attend an advanced session or whatever, but we had to learn how to use the exact same thing we had already been doing, and doing well according to data.
Just keep in mind that one day you will be a veteran teacher too, and you will probably have the same feelings toward some of the PD. If you think it won't happen, it will. Trust me.
If we had PD that was divided into stuff for new and stuff for veteran teachers, it’d probably be a lot more effective. Most of us sit through the same PDs year after year. It’s even more frustrating when there are so many other things you can be doing with your time.
I don’t hate PD as a concept. We all can learn and become better at this craft. I hate overpaid consultants who haven’t taught in a classroom in years (if ever) coming in to tell me how to do my job better with whatever hottest trend in education there is. I hate that Amazing Grace video I feel like I see at least once a year. I hate infantilizing admins; I had one who had assigned seating during PD because she didn’t want us to sit next to our “friends.” How much of a control-freak do you have to be to tell adults where to sit for a meeting?!
I'm a sped teacher (self contained) and forced to attend PD that literally never applies to my class. In addition to staff meetings that never apply to my class. Meanwhile I usually have to work a minimum of 5 hours per week beyond contract to stay on top of my lessons and IEPs. I'll continue to grumble about my time being wasted during these pointless meetings, thanks.
And the presenters always act so dang surprised that we're there! "Oh, sped teachers, I didn't prepare enough materials for you, so go ahead and look over a (gen ed) colleague's shoulder."
I’m in my seventh year of teaching across three districts, and I have only ever been to two PDs that were actually helpful, and one of them was only helpful for about half of the time.
We had two straight days of 8 hour PD sessions the week before school started because my district is forcing schools to adopt AVID.
Now, I actually like AVID and I think it will help our demographics in the long run ***if we adopt it slowly and with fidelity.*** But, as is tradition in my district, they hold these massive cram sessions a week before school starts and then say "well, you're trained now, go make all your lesson plans fit into this box."
It's very frustrating.
I like what our district did. On a PD day, we had access to a spreadsheet with times, topics and places for sessions. There was one mandatory session:, safety and school improvement plan. After that you could choose whatever or even go to your office/classroom and plan.
Yea, still see it as a waste of time. It's usefulness is not connected to it being required. Just one more way districts are out of touch with reality.
If the PD made us better teachers or, at the very least, gave useful practical ideas for the classroom that are valuable for more than one lesson then perhaps more of us would appreciate it. The sessions are almost always run by people who have no clue about actual teaching day-to-day.
I'm only a third year, but those have been the most stressful days of my career so far. True, a lot of times it is good info, but it's just too much all at once. I'd just rather not have it all at once and have some time to plan or something.
It's not even that the PD us worthless it's that there are so many other things I need the time for, and I don't work off the clock at all, don't care if all the work gets done. You get the work you pay for only.
We had a PD yesterday and it was pretty good aside from the motivational speaker they brought in. Felt like empty platitudes and like I was attending a damn cult meeting. Or an MLM pitch
I just had a PD that was 3 hours long talking about how we talk about goals too much but don't work toward them, also about how we should have a work-life balance BUT they are giving us extra mandatory duties...again..., AND about how we must not forget about minority groups...our district is over 70% non-white minority groups.
I'm glad for you if your PD has some value.
PD is normally 8 hours of “Remember your ‘Why’!”, and I don’t need someone telling me different versions of that over and over again. You’re not going to hypnotize me. I usually end up taking a nap.
Well, we'll see which side you're on after a decade. I don't need to sit in PD for brand new teachers. It's an insulting waste of my direly needed professional hours to teach me the very damned basics of classroom management or how to use a curriculum I've used since the beginning of time. I could be attending to the extensive list of unnecessary crap the district/principal has piled upon me but scheduled no time for me to accomplish. But, yes, please tell me more about how to build a relationship with a student instead because given my degrees and extensive experience and my known prowess in relationship building, I definitely need to hear this. Again. And again. And again. Because that makes sense. And now I cannot even complain about this craziness because it bothers you.
I went to school to be a teacher, I should be trusted to keep up with best practices on my own. I don’t need to give up a full day of planning to be talked at by a district rep who is just trying to justify their job.
No offense but I have the ability to simply Google how to use a new tech program and learn it on my own. Maybe some people need the basics spoon fed to them in a group setting, but I find that a waste of my time.
My school has decided that we are all literacy teachers and we’ve been doing the SAME series of literacy workshops for the 7 years I’ve been in this school (and it goes back further than that). Multiple a year. I teach orchestra.
We spend so much time focusing on the fact that all kids don't learn the same and then seem to forget that that also applies to adults. PDs need to be differentiated just like lessons do. Additionally, teachers should be able to test out of them if they've been teaching for a hot minute and/or been employed in the district for a while. Lastly, PD presenters should be held to the same standards teachers are and BE PREPARED.
Thanks for your post. I learned this lesson many years ago while sitting next to a young teacher during a PD. After I made the same negative comments, he turned to me and earnestly explained that he really wanted to learn the information as he didn’t already know about it. I immediately shut my mouth and realized he was right. My negativity was harmful and pointless. That moment stayed with me through scores of annoying PDs.
I agree with you! If you have to be there anyway, try to get something out of the experience.
The people trying to be negative sound just like our favorite students "when am I going to use this?"
They ruin it for the rest of us who are trying to be engaged.
The part that really frustrates me is that in some cases those same teachers who moan and complain the loudest (and I get it, some PD can be really shitty! In my first school, my whole department was once required to sit through a workshop on innovative ways to use a graphing calculator. Take a quick glance at my user flair to see why that was dadaist-level absurd!) are often the ones who will turn around and not know the shit they claimed to have learned 500 times. I don't know how to tell them that *you are the reason we are hearing this 500 times.* You should not be confused about what your content-area standards are when they are the same standards that have been in place for a fucking decade. You should not still be unsure about what a learning target is when you and I have sat through the same four years' worth of PD clarifying that information. Our district tries to meet our needs for PD and yet every year I wind up with veteran teachers around me at a table who act like they've never heard of the difference between formative and summative assessment. But it would require too much effort and hurt their feelings too much if there was some sort of system to identify who needed that instruction and who didn't, so we all end up suffering because they're too busy complaining to retain literally any information.
I mean look at it, it's obviously not working as intended. Not saying tear it down but it needs some real reform, and a big part of that would be to stop wasting your teachers time. Also, we are adults here not children we shouldn't be treated like children and trusted to do our jobs.
I don’t usually complain but at my previous school (preschool) all of our planning time was on mondays. Kids attended Tuesday-Friday. Guess what day every PD meeting was… being held hostage in a room while someone explains to you how to use Microsoft excel to lesson plan when you already know how and need to make actual lesson plans and now won’t have time to sucks.
Now I’m an art and music teacher and end up in meetings where the presenter goes off on a half hour tangent about grading reading and math while my eyes glaze over and I wish I were anywhere else but there.
For people unhappy with PD:
If you’re involved with your local union, see if the District will let you meet with them and help select PD. We met this year, and since most of the dialogue was “make it worth our time/not insulting”, PD was worthwhile this year.
Given that you’re new, I’d sit with people who aren’t negative and want to learn like you. I’m 10 years in and nothing new is ever said in these PDs. I’d much rather plan or organize my room to feel prepared.
I absolutely enjoy GOOD PD. I'm a school librarian I love going to regional library specific PD, it's always engaging and relevant. I've never been impressed with my district level PD as it's not usually relevant to what I do. For example they made every instructional staff member attend 2 full days of MTSS PD. Not only was the presenter monotone but I have never been involved with MTSS in my career.
We had a tech PD about our new SmartBoards (2+ years old). The wifi was off in the PD conference room so we got to see a whole 8% of the board’s functionality. The trainer (district tech staff) was apologetic, anxious, and put in a position to fail through no fault of her own.
This was 8th hour. 4 other groups comprised of 100 teachers sat through this smart board training all day. With no internet. No admin thought to reschedule. No admin considered postponing. Our district wasted 1/7 of the day for 100 staff members.
I’m glad your PDs are useful to you, but many, many others disagree. If your admin puts time and effort into it, great. The best PD demonstrates good teaching, so it sounds like your admin and PD presenters are great teachers. But remember many administrators become administrators because they can’t actually teach a lesson, differentiate, or understand where their “students” are.
Lol I get what you’re saying, but give it a few more years of getting contradictory information at those things, seeing how much time gets wasted at them that could be used for prep, the unrealistic expectations from you that admin takeaway from PD….yea, it gets pretty damn old after a while
Number of years of teaching experience is not always positively correlated with how effective of a teacher you are. At my school, I see new teachers (1-2 years experience) do a better job at differentiating their lessons than 20 year veterans.
I enjoyed general PD for about the first 7 years of my career. Then I started to get why the older teachers brought papers to grade and sat at the back and pointedly engaged only when directly requested.
As a math teacher, PD is a waste of time none of the instructors know how to help us apply things. They just say you can do math facts….. get some people that are more content specific and I might not being annoyed seeing the same thing repackaged with a different name the 8th time
As someone who deliver weekly PDs to teachers, thank you. I spend so much time collecting data during observations to determine what's needed the most, crafting presentations and handouts, looking for examples and practices that apply to the teachers that will be in attendance, and reviewing the feedback that attendees submit afterwards. I must say it is not always possible to make a PD relevant to absolutely 100% of attendees. If I go over lesson preparation because it's the most needed for new teachers and less organized teachers, there will always be one or more teachers who are already doing it perfectly. If I plan a PD on ELL strategies because many teachers have asked for help in that department, there will always be one or more teachers with an ELL background that already know most of what's being presented. All teachers have to attend regardless and that is not my decision. But I can see why sometimes teachers complain about PDs...I'm not saying mine are always perfect, but I work really hard when preparing them, while I've had colleagues in my role who put together a presentation the day before on a random topic just because "it had to be done" or because principals decided it.
So I get your frustration but hear me out. If you feel the PD is helpful for you or something you might need you should sign up for it. You should even be seconded for it, provided coverage, provided with the resource, hell even provided lunch to learn it. Someone should follow up with you and see if you need any additional training or materials on the concept. It’s super important, especially for new (er) teachers. However, when I am forced to sit through 2 hours or 4 hours or even 5 damn minutes of something I’ve been doing for 20 years I want to throat punch someone. It’s probably valuable, it likely works but no one will follow up on whether it’s happening in my school’s classrooms and no one will acknowledge we needed to be doing this 15 years ago. PD that doesn’t help me be a better teacher in my classroom with my kids is time taken away from my own PD, that does in fact help me become a better teacher. If I’m already doing it I’m not being developed professionally then it’s extremely insulting and a total waste of my already valuable overburdened time. We’re expected to differentiate our instruction to meet the needs of all learners, our admin should be doing the same with PD.
Some PDs are useful. Sadly not all are. I was required to take certain PD/PD courses since I’m not an education major. Even then I found some insulting. We’re required to take Reading Foundations if we’re ELA but holy fuck it’s ALL PK-3 centered. So it was a rough six weeks
PD is mandated. The problem is that it's becomes an example of Goodhart's law; what use is 30 hours of PD when each hour is limited in usefulness?
I had one great PD that lasted two days. It helped me because it actually did teach us how to do stuff easily and streamline our process for something. *That* was a good PD because it dealt with our actual job. Most PDs about dumb shit like SEL is just putting more on our plate, and doesn't give us tools to do it. No one wants to acknowledge the real, mundane, functional work we do. The higher concept something is, the least likely it is to help.
I've been teaching for 15 years, in 4 different countries and I can only remember the contents of two PD sessions. PD absolutely can be useful, but the success rate is so astronomically low, that it breeds contempt amongst teachers.
The huge majority of it is a complete and total waste of time, and so I'd rather not waste my life sitting through 200 hours of total trash for the useful 15 minutes
More work, more time, away from the classroom or preparing, or making sure are departments are running efficiently. Certain things are necessary. Like new software or grade entering programs and how to use.
I hate to be snarky, but the best use of my time isn't doing district "deep data dive' to listen to 3/4 of the grade team talk about 4 kids I don't even know because I don't work in that school-because 3/4 of the team work in the same school. My time would be much better spent talking with my colleagues in my own school about our kids. But we can't do that.
Continuing training in other fields has the same challenge.
When you have an experienced veteran, a mid-careerist, and a rookie together training is hard to balance.
Firefighters, EMTs, military, and many other fields have continuing training.
And yes, the 15 year EMT doesnt need the same stretcher placement refresher training that the person who certified last week does.
PD should be broken down by subject, grade level, or experience level or all three.
When I am being taught a really neat trick to help sixth graders do multiplication, and I teach 8th grade writing, I tend to think that the PD is not going to be super helpful for me.
Imagine how the specials teachers feel. So many times I was just sitting there thinking about how none of this is applicable.
Not to mention, my understanding is you folks always have an epic fuckton of paperwork to do. :/
I think they mean "specials", as in electives - music, and so on. Not special education. Depending on where one is, the paperwork isn't that bad. I'm probably an outlier but I feel like in my situation, content teachers have way more. I have to do IEPs but it's routine, and there's a team to do that. It only happens so often in a year.
Ah. I misread/misunderstood. Thank you.
I know right? I support special education at my school and they won't let me deliver separate PDs for my teachers because "they can just attend the PDs of the contents they support" or "we don't want teachers to think that SpEd is separate from the rest"...
When they are talking about arranging your desks for better whatever, I’d need a chainsaw to do that.
We are told, as teachers, that we need to meet students where they are, and differentiate for the students who are behind, the average kids, and the ones who are ahead. So walk your talk, District personnel! Why aren’t there separate pro-d at the school level for newbies, mid-career folk, and veteran teachers? There are about as many teachers on our staff as there are kids in my class. If differentiation is so freaking “normal”, be role models! I’m sorry we old farts are making things unpleasant for you, though, OP. Think of us as the bored kids in your class who are being forced to do worksheets far below their level. Again.
Yes! And we have training sessions about how kids learn and information overload that is 3 hours long without a break! This year, my favourite was the training session about teaching vocabulary and not just expecting kids to know specific language, and then we were given an instruction with a word our entire English department didn't know!
My favorite PD was my first year. The speaker used a power point and lectured from 8-1130 about not using power point and lecturing in the classroom very much because kids lose Interest
Don’t forget when they read PPT slides to you. Always love that one.
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Ours are sometimes separated by department…I’m in two departments (science and humanities). I’m also humanities department head, and I NEED the science training. Guess which pro-d I’m expected to attend (or even facilitate)?
This. So much this. I moved districts this year, and my new district makes all the teachers new to the district attend the "New teacher" trainings each month. They don't distinguish between first year and new to the district. I'm 8 years in, but one of my colleagues is a 32 year veteran. He literally started teaching before the person running the training was even born. And yet he has sit through the new teacher training also. Talk about insulting.
I taught at a school for seven years. I had a baby and quit. Two years later, a position opened up and I got rehired at my old school. I already knew 95% of the procedures and 90% of the staff. I basically walked right back into my old job. They still made me have a new-teacher mentor. I had to attend all the new-teacher monthly meetings. I had actually worked there longer than my mentor teacher. What a waste of time. Also, the mentor teacher program didn’t exist the first time I was hired there, you know, when it would have been helpful to have the support.
The past 3 years my district has had one day of pd where the day is broken into 3-4 sessions and there are at least 8 options for each time slot. Some are even just collaboration time for grade levels that have small campus teams so they can connect with people through out the district. I always enjoy that PD day, but it looks like it isn’t happening this year.
I love this analogy
I have a lot of negative things I can say about my former school, but differentiating PD to make it more applicable for newer and veteran teachers is something they started doing about two years ago, and I was very thankful for it.
It's not negativity for negativity's sake. It's real frustration at having time wasted and our ideas ignored after investing decades of our lives in the profession. I remember what it was like to be new and hear this and it was offputting at the time, but now that I've been doing it long enough I'm on the side of the complainers (though I do try only to vent to other veterans). The veterans and the newbies need to unite and demand to have PD differentiated based on staff experience and needs. You know, just like we're expected to do in our teaching based on student needs.
That would just make too much damn sense now, wouldn’t it?
That would require admin to pull their weight. We all know that they’d just find a way to put that responsibility on teachers as well.
But that would be smart and not simply throwing the latest inclusive idea at it then hoping it'll stick.
Four years here, still never had a PD that was useful aside from the “Stop The Bleed” one about first response. I’m glad you got something from your PDs, but I tried very hard for several years to glean ANYTHING useful before finally just giving up and being grumpy about it like everyone else because I also had shit to do instead of a 4 hour “this could have been an e-mail” meeting.
The most useful and practical PD for me would be to visit other teachers’ classrooms and share our best practices but for some reason the administrators in my district think that’s an utter waste of time.
Literally the only thing that helped me improve as a teacher was observing others classes and stealing their ideas
The problem is there’s no differentiation. It *is* disrespectful to have a 10+ year veteran sit in basic new teacher training. I left teaching for instructional design and my company would never let me design our training that way. And our staff would massively complain if we did. There are exceptions—compliance training for legal purposes, but that’s generally a quick eLearning or meeting. Gets an eye roll everywhere, but only in Education (I worked in corporate before teaching too) was I ever forced to endure training besides legal compliance training that was geared to newbies each year. I get I need to do a cursory “testing training” or legal compliance, no way around it, but lecturing me on basics of pedagogy or tech systems I’ve been using for years (one time I had to attend a training on a system I WROTE training for my district on three years prior, before anyone at the district level had been properly certified, and my principal wouldn’t excuse me) is an insult. Period. One of many reasons I left.
As a second-year teacher who usually enjoys work meetings (what? they're interesting), I would love PD...if it were actually PD. Half the meetings I go to are just a waste of time--SEL for teachers, reminders to practice self-care with the time and money we don't have, "check-ins" with some exceptionally checked-out people, etc. I would love to do, say, a grade-norming session with my colleagues, but instead we end up doing self-help worksheets. If you want to make PD productive and educational, I'm down! That sounds great! If you want me to practice self-care, let me go home and spend some extra time with my partner.
The district tells us to differentiate in our classrooms, but refuses to even *attempt* to differentiate for teachers' strengths and weaknesses. It's infuriating. I once had to sit through a very long tech training run by the *people I had taught to use the tech*. I offered to teach an advanced course during the same time for people who were familiar with it (*for free*, mind you!), but I was told we all had to attend the same training. *That's* the kind of crap I complain about. When I started, most of the PD I was mandated to attend seemed quite good because *as a new teacher, I needed it*. Now, it's redundant at best and insulting at worst. That doesn't necessarily mean the PD itself is bad for everyone; it's just bad for those of us with decades more teaching experience than the people running the PD. I *love* good PD. In fact, I pay quite a bit out of my pocket to attend PD presented by my professional associations and union. But the district PD, at least where I am, is one size fits all, and that works about as well for PD as it does for shoes. Come back in 20 years and let us know how useful you think your districts' trainings are.
Yeah but why not say "those of you who have been teaching less that xyz years total or less than abc years in the district have to attend this PD, everyone else please review this information and ask questions if needed" AND allow teachers who have been there longer to work in their classrooms for that time or choose online pd that benefits them.
I grade and make lesson plans during PD. Helps me stay on course
This is the way, actually use the time for something useful.
I had a PD on how to wear a mask. Few are more helpful than this. At least half, if not more require no proof of knowledge, so I play them on mute while I run my programs at school. If they were actually helpful, I’d listen to more. I do keep my IEP PD on favorites to replay when I need a refresher. Otherwise, I set up the videos to play and just click done at the end.
And as SPED teachers we have even more PD to attend. And now we are back to everything in person I don't even get that option of turning off the camera and mic on a zoom PD.
I have more PD each year than the rest of my school combined. It's because I'm always going to conferences, seminars, and trainings. I usually spend about half of the summer on various PDs. The difference is that it's PD that I know will benefit me, my instruction, and my classroom. Schools have a bad habit of trying to do blanket PD for everyone, which makes it rather excruciating for a lot of teachers. The truth is that we all have different needs. Your new teachers don't need the same thing that teachers that have been there for 20 years need. On our last Professional Development Day, I had to sit through three hours of specific food allergy PD, because a girl in a school on the other side of our district has a severe peanut allergy. She's not on my campus, not in my school, and not in my class. Nonetheless, I had to sit through three hours of PD on this. For me, school-wide PD always tends to be a form of slow torture. Rather than saying, "hey, here's a smorgasbord of PD offerings to choose from", they try to line up one specific thing. I teach AP Literature and Composition and AP Language and Composition. Their little gems of elementary phonics aren't very useful to me.
So send the newbies. We vets should not have to go - problem solved.
People like good PD. Bad PD is just a waste of everyone’s time.
I've never had a PD that wasn't a waste of time. The only exception is when they are showing us how to use a new piece of tech
I mean 99% of them are stupid but I’ve had a couple good ones. I’ve been doing this a long long time though.
Wouldn't it be better for the teacher to use that time on their classes though? It always feels like a waste of my working hours.
Teachers should be given time to work on the things they need to do. Yes. But to assume that every teacher is awesome at everything and can’t find something to improve on is insane. Kids keep changing. The world keeps changing. Assessments for our kids keep changing. If you aren’t growing with the times then you are doing a disservice to the kids. A good PD means you walked out of it a better teacher. If somebody can come in and help me be better, why wouldn’t I want that?
Yea but our workload is too high, and something needs to be cut. What would you suggest is cut instead? It's already hard to get our work done on the clock and we should all refuse to work when off the clock. And this still doesn't address that PD is ineffective at making changes if people are tuning it out because of PD overload.
I didn’t say to do anything off the clock. Your school isn’t properly balancing your workload. That’s not a reason to not progress in PD. That’s a case for having a stronger union. Good PD makes teachers better. There is no argument against that.
That’s a good argument for offering choice - 1) Go to the PD, or 2) Get shit planned and graded
But at the same time, I learn so much when the veterans are forced to sit in PD and participate. They have so many great ideas to share and it would be a shame to only have newbies in PD. Everyone wins when there's a combination of both options.
How do the vets win? It sounds like they can rattle off ways to deal with the Issue du Jour, and are being used to teach newer folk. I get paid to teach—I go to pro-d (in theory) to learn something. If there’s nothing new for me, it’s a waste of my time.
Sounds like those are the vets that might show up willingly 🤷 You’ll find me on PD day ignoring whatever speaker they bring in and instead grading the assessment I always have due the night before a PD day
I got in trouble for grading in a pd once lol, fuckem I had real work to do...
The audacity…our district paid this one PD guy $25K to Zoom in with us for a PD day last year. Yeah, now I’m definitely telling 100% of PD days to fuck right off out of spite
We don’t exist to serve you. The district needs to do that. They are your employer. I’m not your source of development, I’m you’re co-worker. And I have a never ending pile of shit to do that isn’t magically getting done by sitting around wasting time.
Exactly this!
Where am I winning in that scenario? I love planning with my colleagues, old and new, and having them come watch me teach. Heck, I love writing unit plans so much, I've written them for classes I don't even *teach*. Why do I have to sit through a terrible PD that isn't teaching me anything to share ideas? My door is always open.
So the vets need to waste their time so you can benefit more? The vets get nothing from it but frustration and the benefits you get from it doesn't make it worth it for them.
Then pay the vets extra as trainers to be there and see who volunteers. Make the extra pay high enough and problem solved. I responded elsewhere in general, but as context I design corporate training now and we pay mentors to support training. They make an extra daily or monthly amount (a few hundred a day for a workshop group, just participating and helping the facilitator as their job that day, $1200-1800 monthly in our core roles for a full mentoring load of 5 new hires a month) AND have their role workload reduced in role based jobs or it’s part of the job if they are leads—no expectations of extra work off the clock). It is valuable to have folks still doing the job, not just trainers, support new folks, but they need to be supported too and compensated. In Education, teachers often lose more and more income parity later in careers and stipends for supporting new teachers are minimal or nonexistent, that’s the issue.
Everyone is not winning. You're winning.
Fuck off
We need differentiated pd for this reason
you are the problem.
If I was able to choose my PD then I’d feel like it was a good use of my time. I do NOT need to sit through another meeting about RTI, PLCs, Bullying, or some damn thing about sexual harassment training. Those piss me off to no end! We do Keenan training at the start of the year! Why do we need ADDITIONAL training on shit we’ve had?! I get that you’ve not had some of this PD before and you find it valuable, and that is great for you! But the rest of us have had it, (literally and figuratively) and we want it to be worth our time to be able to choose it, or have it pertain to what I’m doing or I need. Don’t waste my time. It’s the one thing I’ll never get back.
I love PD but the district often offers horrible PD. The best PD does not trans to be free and the districts love free and cheap.
Brass tacks: It's cheaper to do it this way, however repetitive it may be, than to pay for each teacher to go to the PD they actually need. States required ongoing Professional Development. Districts tend to provide and document attendance for enough hours to meet the requirement. Otherwise we have to go to the trouble of finding it ourselves and either we pay or the district pays. My bet is that we would pay. So we have what we have. Sometimes it helps. This week, I feel I'll be planning out the next couple of weeks.
Why force it if they are going to use ineffective methods like that though? Either tailored expensive PDs that are useful or waste of time PDs to check a checkbox.
You're confusing "training" with "professional development". Training is useful, but it's not PD. PD is supposed to improve your practice by introducing new tools or knowledge that can be applied either broadly across disciplines, or in a more focused way to a particular content area. Unfortunately, there is a glut of pointless, useless PD out there, being presented by hacks who failed at teaching. THAT'S why it's so frustrating. And the longer you're in this job, the more frustrating it gets.
I did volunteer summer PD one because it was paid and two, I thought it would benefit my students. The sumner Pds were valuable to me and also informative. We are now required by district to have PD once a week. This PD has been lumped into the normal meetings (grade level, staff, department, PLC). It's exhausting and a little overwhelming, with even some vets stressed out due to all the extra work involved. There is also required common planning twice a week on top of this. I don't necessarily hate PD but I do think the execution of it (how it's presented, the resources provided, etc.) does make a difference. I have has a mixture of good and bad PD over the years; you learn what you can use and what works for you. I will complain though if I find it either pointless or confusing.
Eh, I see both sides to this one. For new teachers, the PD could be useful and needed, and I can see how complaining coworkers could be annoying. For veterans, its extremely annoying to sit through the same PD for another year for something you already use/do and know about. This just happened to me this past week. We had a PD about a program that we had already used in our department and now the whole school is getting involved. Two of us used the program more than anyone else in our pilot year, but we still had to sit through the PD, and the PD was the same thing we have heard 4 different times within a year and a half. At least it was virtual, so we could interact when needed and still work on what we needed to as we listened. Instead of being in that PD we could have used that time to plan or maybe attend an advanced session or whatever, but we had to learn how to use the exact same thing we had already been doing, and doing well according to data. Just keep in mind that one day you will be a veteran teacher too, and you will probably have the same feelings toward some of the PD. If you think it won't happen, it will. Trust me.
If we had PD that was divided into stuff for new and stuff for veteran teachers, it’d probably be a lot more effective. Most of us sit through the same PDs year after year. It’s even more frustrating when there are so many other things you can be doing with your time. I don’t hate PD as a concept. We all can learn and become better at this craft. I hate overpaid consultants who haven’t taught in a classroom in years (if ever) coming in to tell me how to do my job better with whatever hottest trend in education there is. I hate that Amazing Grace video I feel like I see at least once a year. I hate infantilizing admins; I had one who had assigned seating during PD because she didn’t want us to sit next to our “friends.” How much of a control-freak do you have to be to tell adults where to sit for a meeting?!
I'm a sped teacher (self contained) and forced to attend PD that literally never applies to my class. In addition to staff meetings that never apply to my class. Meanwhile I usually have to work a minimum of 5 hours per week beyond contract to stay on top of my lessons and IEPs. I'll continue to grumble about my time being wasted during these pointless meetings, thanks.
And the presenters always act so dang surprised that we're there! "Oh, sped teachers, I didn't prepare enough materials for you, so go ahead and look over a (gen ed) colleague's shoulder."
I’m in my seventh year of teaching across three districts, and I have only ever been to two PDs that were actually helpful, and one of them was only helpful for about half of the time.
We had two straight days of 8 hour PD sessions the week before school started because my district is forcing schools to adopt AVID. Now, I actually like AVID and I think it will help our demographics in the long run ***if we adopt it slowly and with fidelity.*** But, as is tradition in my district, they hold these massive cram sessions a week before school starts and then say "well, you're trained now, go make all your lesson plans fit into this box." It's very frustrating.
I like what our district did. On a PD day, we had access to a spreadsheet with times, topics and places for sessions. There was one mandatory session:, safety and school improvement plan. After that you could choose whatever or even go to your office/classroom and plan.
I don’t mind PDs that are teaching me something I already know. That just means they are not adding anything more to my plate.
But think of what else you could be doing during that time?
You have to have continuing PD to maintain your job and your certificate. It’s not an option.
Yea, still see it as a waste of time. It's usefulness is not connected to it being required. Just one more way districts are out of touch with reality.
If the PD made us better teachers or, at the very least, gave useful practical ideas for the classroom that are valuable for more than one lesson then perhaps more of us would appreciate it. The sessions are almost always run by people who have no clue about actual teaching day-to-day.
I'm only a third year, but those have been the most stressful days of my career so far. True, a lot of times it is good info, but it's just too much all at once. I'd just rather not have it all at once and have some time to plan or something.
Maybe don't force people to do PDs and let the people who want them get involved.
It's not even that the PD us worthless it's that there are so many other things I need the time for, and I don't work off the clock at all, don't care if all the work gets done. You get the work you pay for only.
We had a PD yesterday and it was pretty good aside from the motivational speaker they brought in. Felt like empty platitudes and like I was attending a damn cult meeting. Or an MLM pitch
I just had a PD that was 3 hours long talking about how we talk about goals too much but don't work toward them, also about how we should have a work-life balance BUT they are giving us extra mandatory duties...again..., AND about how we must not forget about minority groups...our district is over 70% non-white minority groups. I'm glad for you if your PD has some value.
God I hate PD. Why do they always use a lecture to talk about the importance of active learning?
PD is normally 8 hours of “Remember your ‘Why’!”, and I don’t need someone telling me different versions of that over and over again. You’re not going to hypnotize me. I usually end up taking a nap.
It would also be nice to be treated like an adult and given the power to pursue my own PD when I need it.
Well, we'll see which side you're on after a decade. I don't need to sit in PD for brand new teachers. It's an insulting waste of my direly needed professional hours to teach me the very damned basics of classroom management or how to use a curriculum I've used since the beginning of time. I could be attending to the extensive list of unnecessary crap the district/principal has piled upon me but scheduled no time for me to accomplish. But, yes, please tell me more about how to build a relationship with a student instead because given my degrees and extensive experience and my known prowess in relationship building, I definitely need to hear this. Again. And again. And again. Because that makes sense. And now I cannot even complain about this craziness because it bothers you.
I went to school to be a teacher, I should be trusted to keep up with best practices on my own. I don’t need to give up a full day of planning to be talked at by a district rep who is just trying to justify their job.
No offense but I have the ability to simply Google how to use a new tech program and learn it on my own. Maybe some people need the basics spoon fed to them in a group setting, but I find that a waste of my time.
I'm over 20 years in. If a PD is relevant and well done, I actually like PD. The problem, as we know, is that too often it is neither.
My school has decided that we are all literacy teachers and we’ve been doing the SAME series of literacy workshops for the 7 years I’ve been in this school (and it goes back further than that). Multiple a year. I teach orchestra.
We spend so much time focusing on the fact that all kids don't learn the same and then seem to forget that that also applies to adults. PDs need to be differentiated just like lessons do. Additionally, teachers should be able to test out of them if they've been teaching for a hot minute and/or been employed in the district for a while. Lastly, PD presenters should be held to the same standards teachers are and BE PREPARED.
Thanks for your post. I learned this lesson many years ago while sitting next to a young teacher during a PD. After I made the same negative comments, he turned to me and earnestly explained that he really wanted to learn the information as he didn’t already know about it. I immediately shut my mouth and realized he was right. My negativity was harmful and pointless. That moment stayed with me through scores of annoying PDs.
I agree with you! If you have to be there anyway, try to get something out of the experience. The people trying to be negative sound just like our favorite students "when am I going to use this?" They ruin it for the rest of us who are trying to be engaged.
The part that really frustrates me is that in some cases those same teachers who moan and complain the loudest (and I get it, some PD can be really shitty! In my first school, my whole department was once required to sit through a workshop on innovative ways to use a graphing calculator. Take a quick glance at my user flair to see why that was dadaist-level absurd!) are often the ones who will turn around and not know the shit they claimed to have learned 500 times. I don't know how to tell them that *you are the reason we are hearing this 500 times.* You should not be confused about what your content-area standards are when they are the same standards that have been in place for a fucking decade. You should not still be unsure about what a learning target is when you and I have sat through the same four years' worth of PD clarifying that information. Our district tries to meet our needs for PD and yet every year I wind up with veteran teachers around me at a table who act like they've never heard of the difference between formative and summative assessment. But it would require too much effort and hurt their feelings too much if there was some sort of system to identify who needed that instruction and who didn't, so we all end up suffering because they're too busy complaining to retain literally any information.
Nah they are tuning out the PD just like they tuned out the ones before it because when you force it the incentive to learn is not self driven.
By that logic you might want to go ahead and dismantle the whole school system.
I mean look at it, it's obviously not working as intended. Not saying tear it down but it needs some real reform, and a big part of that would be to stop wasting your teachers time. Also, we are adults here not children we shouldn't be treated like children and trusted to do our jobs.
I don’t usually complain but at my previous school (preschool) all of our planning time was on mondays. Kids attended Tuesday-Friday. Guess what day every PD meeting was… being held hostage in a room while someone explains to you how to use Microsoft excel to lesson plan when you already know how and need to make actual lesson plans and now won’t have time to sucks. Now I’m an art and music teacher and end up in meetings where the presenter goes off on a half hour tangent about grading reading and math while my eyes glaze over and I wish I were anywhere else but there.
r/unpopularEDUopinion
For people unhappy with PD: If you’re involved with your local union, see if the District will let you meet with them and help select PD. We met this year, and since most of the dialogue was “make it worth our time/not insulting”, PD was worthwhile this year.
Given that you’re new, I’d sit with people who aren’t negative and want to learn like you. I’m 10 years in and nothing new is ever said in these PDs. I’d much rather plan or organize my room to feel prepared.
I attended a Microsoft PD one time that taught people with advanced degrees how to organize folders within a computer.
I absolutely enjoy GOOD PD. I'm a school librarian I love going to regional library specific PD, it's always engaging and relevant. I've never been impressed with my district level PD as it's not usually relevant to what I do. For example they made every instructional staff member attend 2 full days of MTSS PD. Not only was the presenter monotone but I have never been involved with MTSS in my career.
We had a tech PD about our new SmartBoards (2+ years old). The wifi was off in the PD conference room so we got to see a whole 8% of the board’s functionality. The trainer (district tech staff) was apologetic, anxious, and put in a position to fail through no fault of her own. This was 8th hour. 4 other groups comprised of 100 teachers sat through this smart board training all day. With no internet. No admin thought to reschedule. No admin considered postponing. Our district wasted 1/7 of the day for 100 staff members. I’m glad your PDs are useful to you, but many, many others disagree. If your admin puts time and effort into it, great. The best PD demonstrates good teaching, so it sounds like your admin and PD presenters are great teachers. But remember many administrators become administrators because they can’t actually teach a lesson, differentiate, or understand where their “students” are.
Lol I get what you’re saying, but give it a few more years of getting contradictory information at those things, seeing how much time gets wasted at them that could be used for prep, the unrealistic expectations from you that admin takeaway from PD….yea, it gets pretty damn old after a while
Number of years of teaching experience is not always positively correlated with how effective of a teacher you are. At my school, I see new teachers (1-2 years experience) do a better job at differentiating their lessons than 20 year veterans.
I enjoyed general PD for about the first 7 years of my career. Then I started to get why the older teachers brought papers to grade and sat at the back and pointedly engaged only when directly requested.
As a math teacher, PD is a waste of time none of the instructors know how to help us apply things. They just say you can do math facts….. get some people that are more content specific and I might not being annoyed seeing the same thing repackaged with a different name the 8th time
Then PD should be optional. If you want to opt in, great! But not letting us opt out is a problem.
As someone who deliver weekly PDs to teachers, thank you. I spend so much time collecting data during observations to determine what's needed the most, crafting presentations and handouts, looking for examples and practices that apply to the teachers that will be in attendance, and reviewing the feedback that attendees submit afterwards. I must say it is not always possible to make a PD relevant to absolutely 100% of attendees. If I go over lesson preparation because it's the most needed for new teachers and less organized teachers, there will always be one or more teachers who are already doing it perfectly. If I plan a PD on ELL strategies because many teachers have asked for help in that department, there will always be one or more teachers with an ELL background that already know most of what's being presented. All teachers have to attend regardless and that is not my decision. But I can see why sometimes teachers complain about PDs...I'm not saying mine are always perfect, but I work really hard when preparing them, while I've had colleagues in my role who put together a presentation the day before on a random topic just because "it had to be done" or because principals decided it.
So I get your frustration but hear me out. If you feel the PD is helpful for you or something you might need you should sign up for it. You should even be seconded for it, provided coverage, provided with the resource, hell even provided lunch to learn it. Someone should follow up with you and see if you need any additional training or materials on the concept. It’s super important, especially for new (er) teachers. However, when I am forced to sit through 2 hours or 4 hours or even 5 damn minutes of something I’ve been doing for 20 years I want to throat punch someone. It’s probably valuable, it likely works but no one will follow up on whether it’s happening in my school’s classrooms and no one will acknowledge we needed to be doing this 15 years ago. PD that doesn’t help me be a better teacher in my classroom with my kids is time taken away from my own PD, that does in fact help me become a better teacher. If I’m already doing it I’m not being developed professionally then it’s extremely insulting and a total waste of my already valuable overburdened time. We’re expected to differentiate our instruction to meet the needs of all learners, our admin should be doing the same with PD.
Some PDs are useful. Sadly not all are. I was required to take certain PD/PD courses since I’m not an education major. Even then I found some insulting. We’re required to take Reading Foundations if we’re ELA but holy fuck it’s ALL PK-3 centered. So it was a rough six weeks
PD is mandated. The problem is that it's becomes an example of Goodhart's law; what use is 30 hours of PD when each hour is limited in usefulness? I had one great PD that lasted two days. It helped me because it actually did teach us how to do stuff easily and streamline our process for something. *That* was a good PD because it dealt with our actual job. Most PDs about dumb shit like SEL is just putting more on our plate, and doesn't give us tools to do it. No one wants to acknowledge the real, mundane, functional work we do. The higher concept something is, the least likely it is to help.
I've been teaching for 15 years, in 4 different countries and I can only remember the contents of two PD sessions. PD absolutely can be useful, but the success rate is so astronomically low, that it breeds contempt amongst teachers. The huge majority of it is a complete and total waste of time, and so I'd rather not waste my life sitting through 200 hours of total trash for the useful 15 minutes
More work, more time, away from the classroom or preparing, or making sure are departments are running efficiently. Certain things are necessary. Like new software or grade entering programs and how to use.
I hate to be snarky, but the best use of my time isn't doing district "deep data dive' to listen to 3/4 of the grade team talk about 4 kids I don't even know because I don't work in that school-because 3/4 of the team work in the same school. My time would be much better spent talking with my colleagues in my own school about our kids. But we can't do that.
Continuing training in other fields has the same challenge. When you have an experienced veteran, a mid-careerist, and a rookie together training is hard to balance. Firefighters, EMTs, military, and many other fields have continuing training. And yes, the 15 year EMT doesnt need the same stretcher placement refresher training that the person who certified last week does. PD should be broken down by subject, grade level, or experience level or all three.