Preparation & Planning PD

Preparing and planning for professional development comes with many different emotions. I am excited to pass along my knowledge and experiences but nervous at the same time wondering if I will be able to provide participants with information they will find helpful. I’m anxious that few participants will show up or have little interest in what I have to offer. However, with all those feelings also comes the feeling of being grateful for this opportunity and that all four elementary principals have agreed to allow me to do this in their buildings.

While planning and preparing for the first session, I kept in mind some of the tips Elaina Aguilar (2014) provides in her blog, 10 Tips for Delivering Awesome Professional Development. While I have extensive knowledge about our first topic, getting started with Chromebooks in the classroom, I have left time in the presentation for participants to share their experiences as well. We all know that what works best for one teacher might not work the best for others, therefore, sharing is a must. Also, while this topic could be an all day workshop, there is a definite start and end time that must be met so only the absolute necessary key points will be addressed during this session. Aguilar (2014) also provides a suggestion to celebrate participation at the end of each session. Patrick Goertz (2015) also wrote about celebrations in his blog post, Tech Tuesday, that incentives for participation may increase attendance and interest. Taking his advice and his experience with this type of professional development, I purchased a $10 Starbucks gift card as a raffle drawing prize as well as swag (stickers) for each session.

One big item on my preparation checklist was communication with teachers in all four buildings. I typed up a template, leaving building names and dates to be filled. In addition, invitation were created to be inserted as an image into each email. Although I read and reread each email multiple times, one message sent included one little bit of misinformation that caused some chaos and one teacher in a panic because she responded all with a statement about her administrator not realizing that administrator was included in the email. Mistakes happen but what was done about it is what counts. A contributing author for Vertical Response (2017), has established guidelines of what to do when email mistakes happen. In my case, it was a location mistake. I didn’t remove the previous school name before sending to another school. Vertical Response proposes that when a wrong date or location are communicated, an immediate follow up email is required. That is exactly what I did. I apologized for my mistake, fixed the mistake, and stated that I hoped to see everyone soon.

I have received messages from teachers both through email and social media about their excitement for these sessions coming to the elementary buildings. Those messages replace a lot of the nervousness with more excitement knowing that there are teachers who will be attending and who are eager to learn.

References

Aguilar, E. (2014, Sept 18). 10 Tips for Delivering Awesome Professional Development. Retrieved from

https://www.edutopia.org/blog/10-tips-delivering-awesome-professional-development-elena-aguilar

Correction Email: How to Send Apologies Email for Mistakes & Typos. (2018, July 05). Retrieved from https://www.verticalresponse.com/blog/oops-what-to-do-when-email-mistakes-happen/

Goertz, P. (2015, Feb 15). Tech Tuesday: How to Stop Worrying and Love the Tech. Retrieved from

https://www.edutopia.org/discussion/tech-tuesday-how-stop-worrying-and-love-tech