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Professional development activities that have proven effective will be included in Develop Your Staff. Your contributions are welcome. Send them to principal@osu.edu. Please indicate if we may use your name in the “contributor” credits.
Pave the Road to Maximum Teaching and Learning Part 3: Deliver the Workshop and Follow Through
You’ve prepared yourself (Part 1), the agenda, packet, and work team rosters (Part 2). Today’s the day it all comes together.
Welcome/Icebreaker
Have refreshment table by the door. As participants enter, give each a folded paper with a classroom rule statement. With 50 participants, for example, have 40 inappropriate rule statements from Rules for Making Rules and 10 workable statements.
Announce the appropriate rule statements and award small prizes. Ask, “If
your rule didn“t get called, what was different about its wording?” Get
some examples.
Tell participants that you’ll come back to this
point later in the workshop.
Overview
Distribute workshop packets, which should include copies of all visuals.
- Show transparency or PowerPoint slide listing benefits to participants (more time for instruction, mutual support for positive learning climate, etc.)
- Show student performance data from standard assessments and teacher-assigned grades.
Target all academic areas and show trends by listing data for one grade over a three-year period or across grade levels: K-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-12.
Consider also disaggregating data by gender, especially as students approach adolescence.
Logistics for Teamwork
Preview list of room assignments, group facilitators,
and time frame outlined in Part 2.
When teamwork begins, you and your administrative team (assistant, counselor,
etc.) will rotate into each group to answer process questions and observe.
Don’t—I repeat—DO NOT suggest specific classroom rules. Your staff needs to own responsibility for teaching, enforcing, and reinforcing the rules.
Reporting Out
Collect each team’s rules, and during break, make
a transparency for each.
Reconvene whole staff and ask facilitators to summarize each group’s
process and product. Encourage self-assessment by staff, with Rules
for Making Rules as the rubric.
If you want to suggest improvements, resist that urge in this setting. Meet later with teams to collaborate if needed, but try to keep changes to a minimum.
Follow Through
Depending on your resources, have each team’s final copy formatted as posters or laminated color copies for each classroom.
Deliver the posters personally, during class, and recognize staff efforts publicly.
By so doing, you acknowledge what is true: that your staff’s work is important and that you value their collaboration on behalf of student achievement.
