Did you enjoy the holidays? Did you spend quality time with friends and family? Did you make any New Year's resolutions?
We all enjoy the holidays this time of year. These are special events that create great memories and are times for celebration. However, in the days that follow,
some of us experience feelings of depression as we descend from the emotional highs of gifts, gluttony and greetings. We slip back into our routines and pay our credit card bills. Events like holidays cause peaks and valleys of emotion. Without special events, our lives are dull. It is events, we look forward to. Events give us memories, but it is routines that give us meaning. Events come and go with the emotional highs and lows. It is our routines that make a difference. Think about the stereotypical New Year's resolution. We all profess to lose weight, exercise, eat better and be more patient and tolerant. Most of these resolutions fade into distant memory until we dust them off, next year at this time. However, those resolutions that we do successfully transfer into routines make a difference and lead to a better life.
What does this have to do with professional learning? Well, I ask you do think about professional learning. Is it an event or a routine? In your mind is professional learning one of those Superintendent's day presentations or workshops? It is an event like an online course we complete, or a conference we attend. We enjoy and remember those professional learning events. They give us memories but do they make a difference.
It is the professional learning routines that make a difference and lead to true growth within the profession. Think about how your learned a new software application. You may have been excited about a learning event when you were introduced to an exciting new application, but if you failed to fold this software into your routine, you soon forget it and lose the skills. It is the new things you do on a daily basis that make a difference, new things you try, conversations you share, constant reflection on your work. These are professional learning routines.
Even within professional learning, we tend to think of evaluation of professional learning as events - an evaluation form, a survey or even a test. Those evaluation events are memorable and give us some data. But to truly make a difference, evaluation needs to be a routine - more formative evaluation. When we do formal workshops and presentations (there is still a place for workshops) we should use technology to solicit ongoing feedback as to how participants are processing the new learning, right during the workshop. What is repetitious? What is novel? What is practical? In addition to conducting surveys, let's incorporate professional learning evaluation into team meetings, walkthroughs, even submission of daily lesson plans.
Convert events into routines, it will improve professional learning and help you reach one of those New Year's resolution goals.
