The Professional Learning & Innovation Center launched a new professional learning series this year to support teachers, coaches and administrators who are asked to design and facilitate professional learning in their own districts.
Designing and Facilitating Professional Learning
began on November 26, 2019, where facilitator, Kerri Bullock, had an opportunity to work with local coaches and administrators for the first session of the series. This session focused on grounding in the characteristics of quality professional learning and identifying key research about meeting the needs of adult learners.
New resources for many of the participants included:
Throughout the session, participants had opportunities to engage in a variety of interactive learning structures so that they could build their own toolbox of strategies for facilitating professional learning. Not only did the attendees participate in the structures, they had an opportunity to debrief and analyze why the structure was used and how it was intentionally chosen to meet the needs of the participants.
Participants will be coming back together again on January 3rd for the second day of the series. During this session, participants will be adding an additional lens to the design of their professional learning - incorporating the
Social Emotional Learning core competencies from CASEL
. Just as we ask teachers to incorporate these skills into the lessons in their classrooms, we want to think about how we model this in a similar way for the adults in professional learning. The participants will have an opportunity during this session to evaluate and enhance their design for upcoming professional learning that they will be leading and receive feedback from a peer. The final session of the year (April 2020) will allow the participants to reflect on their facilitation and plan for the next steps for themselves as facilitators.
The PLIC hopes to continue offering this series as part of it’s regional professional learning opportunities in the future. If you have specific needs in your district to support a group of teacher leaders, coaches, and/or administrators, please feel free to contact Kerri Bullock with your requests.
