Professional Development & Instructional Coaching

Wolverines Working Together!

Professional development is a critical piece to improving practice. Teachers look to improve in their craft through meaningful opportunities that are relevant to the current reality in the classroom, supportive of student achievement, and are well organized. In an effort to brand the professional development at L. Douglas Wilder Middle School, and to help teachers become more invested in their own learning, the W.W.T, or Wolverines Working Together, came to be. We started with a web site that would house all of our session information and be a resource for teachers. Now, with the addition of Schoology, we house all of our professional learning in a course which also gives instructional leaders in the building the tools to model high quality instructional delivery.

For the last three years, one of my main accomplishments as a professional development coordinator has been organizing an unconference for my staff. An unconference (sometimes referred to as an Edcamp) allows teachers to choose the topics of learning and facilitate sessions as an open discussion. This non-traditional format of professional development has been well received by staff. One of our HCPS consultants remarked in an email to my principal; "...I had a chance to sit in a session yesterday of the UnConference and was extremely impressed with the staff sharing and rich discussion on an instructional topic they selected,(Classroom Approaches: Incentives and Consequences). The teachers were engaged and thoughtful in their communication. There were some teacher leaders who really stood out and were willing to share their perspectives, what worked for them and offered valuable insight. Mrs. Toy and her committee are to be commended for the organization of this training experience."

As an instructional coach, I feel building relationships is a key component. I focused a lot this year on understanding my teacher's "why". I want to know their goals for using certain instructional strategies or tools. In order to do this, I started to visit classrooms for 10 minutes at a time just to see teachers in action without a form to fill out or specific goal in mind. I paid attention to their classroom, how they interacted with students and do what they do best- teach! This kind of observation gave me a chance to really get to know what is important to my teachers so when they did need my support, I knew what was important to them and could adjust my coaching to meet them where they are.