Personalized Professional Development

One of my favorite books is Drive by Daniel Pink.  For me, this was a game changer in our approach to personalized learning at FHS.  Pink spelled out what really motivates people - autonomy, purpose, and mastery.  If you think about our current education system we do not provide our students, or staff, opportunities to leverage any of three drivers in their own learning.  Instead our current system is based on control and compliance which has lead to disengaged students and staff.

So, the question is "how do you incorporate autonomy, purpose, and mastery into the classroom?"  In my mind, teachers have to experience it first hand before they see how these can increase student motivation.  They have to feel these in action.  The only way to do that is to give up some control - something administrators are not always good at.

Over the past three years at Farmington High School we have experimented with various forms of personalized professional development.  We started by flipping some PD sessions and then moved to an EdCamp style format.  The flipping was a good way to introduce staff to autonomy.  They had some control over when and where they watched the video.  The EdCamp model introduced purpose and mastery to autonomy.  Sessions were created based on what staff wanted to learn more.  Each session was tailored to the specific needs and interests of those taking part discussion.

This progression laid the groundwork for our approach to professional development at FHS.  Today is a professional development day at FHS, but you would never know it by being in the building.  You do not see the traditional large group instruction that is associated with professional development.  Instead we set up a framework and turned over the 8 hours of professional development that would have been "given" to them today and teachers were allowed to set their goals for those hours, determine how they would meet the goals and decide how they would share their their learning.  This is exactly what we want our students to be able to do!!!

The results and feedback have been amazing.  Staff love the freedom to determine what they want to learn or improve.  My role has changed from a deliverer of content to a support.  I have more conversations with staff about their learning and how I can support them than ever before - the best part is it is something they are excited about.  My goal in this process is to model this process so they can apply it in their classrooms.  Teachers get to feel how autonomy, purpose, and mastery make their learning more valuable and to be honest more enjoyable.

How can we expect our approach to classroom instruction to change if we do not approach teacher learning differently?