Laura K Spencer, Ed.D.

Tag: professional development

  • This Week, I Get to Do What I Love

    This Week, I Get to Do What I Love

    This week, I get to do what I love: lead professional learning with the incredible staff at Elite Academic Academy.

    We are a virtual school. For most of the year, we wave at each other through screens, send messages in GChat, and meet in tiny Zoom boxes. So when we come together in person, it’s not just a training. It’s a reunion.

    Three days of learning. Three days of hugs, hallway laughter, hallway tears, hallway everything. It’s sacred.

    It’s also the result of months of planning. Spreadsheets, logistics, late-night ideas scribbled in a notebook, and, let’s be honest, a whole lot of anxiety. Will it come together? Will it feel meaningful? Will we use this time in a way that honors how precious it really is?

    And then Tuesday morning arrives, and that first staff member walks down the hall and gives you a hug, and it all clicks into place.

    Yes, we’ll be sharing some amazing things happening at Elite. AI. VR. A live virtual all-school musical that still gives me goosebumps. But the technology is not the story. The people are.

    We’re spending this time focusing on culture, community, and relationships. On making sure every student, every staff member, every person connected to Elite feels like they matter. Because they do.

    This is the work I love. And if you’re planning your own event, or looking for a speaker who leads with heart and clarity, I’d be honored to help.

  • Relationships. Culture. Twitter. OY!

    Relationships. Culture. Twitter. OY!

    I was at a Women in Educational Leadership the other day, and one of the sessions presented by a local superintendent was on culture. She shared four essentials for creating a positive culture. They are:

    • Energize and Encourage People
    • Foster Connected Relationships and Teams
    • Provide Opportunities for People to Do Their Best Work
    • Empower and Enable People to Learn and Grow

    After she shared the categories, she had us walk around the room and get ideas from others as to ways in which to provide those essentials. That time to talk about our ideas, elaborate on them and create new ones together created our own positive culture. In those few moments with each other we were truly listening, engaging with each other and building a sense of connection.

    It’s what’s missing on Twitter. Lately, Twitter seems to be filled with dime store platitudes lacking any depth. If I could get a dime for every time someone says relationships are the key… the key to student engagement, the key to school culture, the key to learning gaps… without explaining just how to develop those relationships, I could pay off my student loans!

    So I’m sharing my notes from our walkabout and challenging everyone to add an item. Let’s not just talk relationships and culture. Let’s talk about the work we are/should/can do to create positive cultures that truly promote relationships.

    Four Essentials for Creating a Positive Culture

    Notes from my walkabout. Template provided by Supt Candace Singh

     

  • Reflect On Our Practice

    “We are generating more information and knowledge than ever today, but knowledge is only good if you can reflect on it.”

    Thomas L. Friedman, Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations

    I had the pleasure of being interviewed the other day by an educator pursuing an advanced degree in educational technology.

    It was a pleasure because her interview questions made me reflect on my current practices, my past practices, and my reasons for each.

    All great interviews should involve both parties walking away feeling like they have both contributed and learned something – whether it be for a job, or a research paper, or a podcast.

    I share with you abbreviated forms of her questions so that you, too, can reflect on the work you do. And hey, if you want to share an answer, that’d be fabulous.

    1. As part of my master’s program, I was asked to develop a professional development (PD) course around Universal Design for Learning.  This PD was designed for the learning to happen over several weeks.  However, in my current school district, PD days are booked at the beginning of the year, and there are many competing initiatives all promoted at the district level so that it becomes close to impossible to do any PD that extends beyond an hour because there is a need to provide PD for the wide range of initiatives.  Do you have similar issues in your district?  If so, how do you work to provide some long term, meaningful PD?

    2. Currently, our district provides PD as a one size fits all approach.  I believe part of this strategy is for accountability. How do you help move the district to more differentiated learning for staff?  How do you get administrative buy in?

    3. At one time, our 1:1 program encouraged parents to think of the Chromebook as a family tool.  Parents were encouraged to get their own email accounts and to log into their student’s device in order to look for jobs, pay bills and to work towards increasing their employable skills by becoming more proficient with technology.  However, concerns have prompted the tech department to lock down all devices so that they now may only be used with a district email address, thus taking the tech away from the parents. Can public schools close the digital access and equity divide for both students and families, or are 1:1 programs actually contributing to the divide?

    4. As part of our master’s program, we have been encouraged to become familiar with UDL, OER, Copyright, Creative Commons and Internet Use Agreements.  How would you prioritize the importance of these in your daily work and why?  When looking for new members for your educational technology team, which of these would you consider to be most important for an applicant to have expertise with?

    5. If you could suggest areas of focus for people entering the field of educational technology to have, what would you suggest?  Why?

  • Be More Dog!

    My daughter wrote a blog post about her observations and experiences while serving as the Social Media Director for SDCUE conference. In her post, she reflected on the lack of “teachers eager to keep learning and the ones who wanted to keep up with the new technologies” when she was in school just a couple years ago. She questioned why teachers are “stuck in their ways” and why there aren’t more teachers like the ones at SDCUE who want to keep on learning.

     

    Maybe it’s because those “stuck” (her word, not mine) teachers need to be more dog. You see, dogs are amazed by EVERYthing. A snack is amazing. The UPS driver is amazing. Even a chewed up ball that smells like mud and lost its shape is amazing. They live for the moment, and they aren’t afraid to fail.

    So how can we build the confidence and excitement of our teachers that have not yet channeled their inner dog? What chew toy, adventure, or treat will make them as excited as a dog? Do teachers need more time to connect with teachers that are already being more dog? Do they need more professional development on how to be a dog? Are teachers being asked to be more dog while living in a cat house? How do we fix this?

    Culture. We talk about it in terms of the behaviors of a group, such as school culture. But when you look at its Latin root, it means growing, or cultivation. We grow a culture based on our behaviors and beliefs. In education, bogged down by bureaucracy and budget shortfalls and high stakes testing and (whatever else you want to insert here) we have cultivated a culture of … cats. Of people who are tired of chasing the laser light around the room. It’s up to all of us to change that culture. To create more opportunities to be dog. After all, if we aren’t feeling awesome about what we’re doing, how is a student to ever feel awesome learning with us?

    If we could all just encourage each other to find moments of dog, we’ll work towards creating the experiences Alex kept searching and hoping for when she was in school. We can all chase the ball. Chew the toy. Grab the stick. We can all be more dog.

    Read more about the Be More Dog campaign (2013) and all the ways they inspired people to drop their cat-like ways and embrace the dog inside.

  • The Gift of Urgency

    The Gift of Urgency

    Urgency is often a gift. It can create both clarity and action. – Mark Miller

    When I started my teaching career, my dad would scoff about Teacher Professional Growth Days. I remember him saying, “I don’t see cars in the parking lot… it’s just another day off for teachers.” Well Dad, today we had 300 teachers packed in at one school engaging in some of the most meaningful professional growth I have seen during my 16 years as an educator.

    Starting our day was a call to action from the superintendent. After years of stagnant test scores, he emphasized that it is time to face our current reality. Students aren’t succeeding academically. What work must be done to turn this around?

    Five instructional systems were discussed: Coherent First Teaching, Intervention, Positive Behavior Support, Assessments, and Teacher Collaboration. These gears, when in sync, can create monumental shifts in the learning experience of students. So how do we get there? Through professional learning, principal leadership, and district leadership.

    After our call to action, teachers were placed in collaborative teams, K-8, to look at the mathematical and NGSS science and engineering practices and really dig in to understanding them. It wasn’t about what lesson are we teaching tomorrow, but about how we engage students in deeper thinking, deeper questioning, and deeper problem solving. In every room, the conversations were powerful, engaging, and with the student in mind.

    Something special is happening here today. I think one day down the road, when the gears are well oiled and working smoothly together, we’ll look back and see this day as the day the shift happened. The day we embraced our gift of urgency and responded to the call to action.

  • Stop Drinking From a Firehose

    So I’m sitting in a District Leadership professional development session and the presenter asks the audience to share with each other what his/her district is doing to inspire teachers to embrace and integrate the Common Core State Standards in their teaching.

    Each district administrator shares a common theme: Professional development, professional development, professional development. The delivery varied. Some were using an LMS to provide just-in-time training opportunities. Others hired Teachers on Special Assignment to coach teachers in the classroom. All were providing pull-out sessions in which an outside consultant or district leader taught the teachers while a substitute taught the students.

    And then one Curriculum Director said, “We’re offering a lot of pull-out sessions. The teachers are overwhelmed and complaining, but one day when it’s all done, they’ll have an opportunity to use it and realize that it was a positive experience.”

    One day?

    …. One day?

    I know I read it somewhere, but isn’t the rule of thumb that new ideas/trainings need to be implemented within 48-72 hours if they are going to be implemented at all? It’d be like teaching a kindergardner calculus and assuming that one day, when the time is right, the child will put it to use.

    How much professional development, or professional learning as some are calling it now, can we shove down a teacher’s throat before they spit it all out? Why are we forcing them to drink from a firehouse instead of a water bottle? Are we helping or hindering our mission?