Professional Development Essay

1055 Words3 Pages

Professional development deeps teachers understand of new teaching strategies or helps reinforce current teaching strategies. This is a time for teachers to grow as educators so they can help their students become more successful. When professional development is implemented correctly it can leave teacher feeling confident in their ability to implement new teaching techniques or it can leave teachers discourage and confused. Linda Darling-Hammond’s article discusses several different studies in professional development. These studies concluded that professional development that is given over several hours and throughout several months is more successful that professional development that is only given in a few hours and over a couple of days. …show more content…

The administration dedicated two days to professional development to learn new strategies. By the end of the professional development the teachers were excited about the program, but still had doubts and questions. When the teachers meet in the spring with the consultant the teachers admitted they did not use the teaching strategy for various reasons. One of the reasons was the teachers did not fully understand how to implement the new strategy (Darling-Hammond & Richardson, 2009). If these teachers had more training than just two days they probably could have been more successful. Two days of professional development is not enough time to completely understand a new teaching concept. Getting training on a strategy throughout the year is more beneficial to the teachers and the students than only getting two …show more content…

Professional development is where educators gather to get training to better their students, however this is often unsuccessful. In Linda Darling-Hammond’s article it is discussed that teachers need professional development that is centered on student learning, integrated with school improvement, has content that is pushes active learning, and helps build communities for teachers (Darling-Hammond & Richardson, 2009). By using research with professional development, researchers can see what works and what does not. Research can help us fill in the gaps, fix real-world problems, and see why something happens (Lauer,2006). When teachers get appropriate professional development, teachers can help their student be successful in all area of their

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