Outlining the Move Towards Student-Centered Instruction

This is the fifth in a series of posts about a movement that I am starting in my school.  My school predominantly instructs in a teacher-centered model, and my aim is to shift that to a student-centered instruction model.  This series will serve as a means to flesh out my ideas as I plan for professional development during the 2014-15 school year.

Today's post will share an outline of the monthly topics of my professional development sessions.  In the fall, I will revisit this series to assess how the professional learning is going, identify areas that I need to address, and share any lessons that I have learned. You can read my previous posts in the series here. 

Before you get to the actual plan, let me share some thoughts on how each session needs to be structured in order for the teachers to receive maximum benefit from this experience.  One thing that I am going to place a strong emphasis on is scheduling this PD during the teacher's regular workday.  By having it during the day, I hope to keep teachers from feeling as this is one more thing to do.  When PD happens after school, teachers can be distracted by outside responsibilities involving family, community, etc.  This may also creep in during PD scheduled during the day, but I am hoping it will be reduced.  

Another important attribute for my PD plan will be for each session to be structured as similarly as possible to how their classrooms should look.  It will not be a run of the mill, sit and get PD experience where I do all of the talking.  I do not want their classrooms to look like this, so why would I conduct my PD in this manner?  Also, I would like to make these sessions as relevant as possible for the teachers, so that they can walk out of them with activities, resources, and ideas that they can take back to their classroom and implement the next day.

Here is the plan.  Please feel free to provide any suggestions that you may have to make this as impactful as possible.  This is a work in progress, to be sure, and your feedback will help me greatly.

Professional Learning Plan for 2014