Professional Learning: everyone wants it and everyone needs it. But the when, how and what can be difficult to achieve for a your entire staff, let alone a group of teachers you have never met before. I really love curating and creating staff PL events: it gives me the chance to connect with, share amongst and learn from other teachers. They can be super-informal, like watching a TED talk and having some discussion or watching a film with some pizza and reflecting on the lessons to be learned from it within our own contexts (see 'Whiplash' - one of the great films of the last five years IMO).
Whatever and whenever it is, finding out what staff need should be your starting point. The image below and to the right is an example of a PL matrix, combining things I thought teachers would like to learn about and things that were suggested to me by other teachers. It has been produced as a 'PL Bingo' sheet, an idea that seems quite popular amongst other teachers who provide training for their staff in schools. There can be prizes given for getting five in a row, etc., providing some extrinsic motivation for staff to come along to the sessions. However, the aim is for the sessions themselves to be valuable enough for staff to come on their own accord. Some are quite intensive, others are relatively carefree. Depending on the content and aim, I can often provide NESA registered PL for staff, which is great for accruing your necessary hours to maintain accreditation. Some are as informal as watching a film and just having a chat without too much cognitive drain. The aim is to provide content that provides genuine interest and motivation, opportunities for learning and the chance to to communicate and collaborate with others.
I'd like to keep building these matrices and developing the idea further. Current ideas including have staff choose a cell each and provide an idea for a topic and build in some more fun extrinsic motivators. Feel free to copy and make your own variations of the PL Bingo matrix.
