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How to use Tools for Teaching:
A Plan for Professional Development

The Principal's Role

The principal is the key decision maker for training and follow-through at the school site. Tactical decisions that are made before training begins often determine it's ultimate success or failure. Here are some key tactical decisions:

  • Principal Participation
    The principal determines whether professional development will be on the front burner or the back burner. If professional development is not on the principal's front burner, it will not happen. Principals, therefore, must be advocates. Giving permission is not enough. They must provide time for training, protect it from being cross-scheduled, and participate so they are as knowledgeable as their teachers.
  • School Site Focus
    Training is best done by a team of mentor quality teachers at each school site. Not only will they draw colleagues into training by word-of-mouth as they use the program in their classrooms, but they will also be close at hand to problem solve with trainees. If a trainee has difficulty with a new procedure, they either get help quickly from a friend or they are likely to dump it. Consequently, school site training teams serve one of their most important functions during follow-through.
  • Build on Strength
    The most willing and able teachers should be trained first. Often they become co-trainers, thereby expanding the school site training team. In addition, their success should be shared with the faculty so that more hesitant colleagues say, "Well, if it can help them, I guess it can help me too." While well intentioned, the decision to train the most needy teachers first reduces faculty buy-in by stigmatizing training as remedial.
  • Make Training Voluntary
    Changing habits of teaching requires that the teacher focus on new ways of doing things as they begin each class period. They must want to change. Rather than mandating that teachers participate, it is better to create a critical mass of success with strong teachers who volunteer. One exception, however, is when a faculty decides as a group to do a program. This often sweeps nay-sayers into training with a minimum of resistance.
  • Start Slow, Go Slow
    One of the hardest things for an administrator to do once an excellent program demonstrates its merit is to slow down. "Let's train everyone on the faculty" can preempt the systematic process of training that permits a program to gain strength gradually as people discover its value.
  • Train and Retrain
    Our tradition in professional development is to train teachers in one program and then move on to another program never looking back. Yet, total mastery is a lot to ask of any first encounter. Rather, we know that skills are built slowly and incrementally. Continual work with a program over an extended period of time gives teachers the chance not only to gain comfort with new skills, but also to iron out the wrinkles in classroom application.
  • Focus on Follow-Through
    Think of successful professional development at a school site as being a 3-year process. While some teachers succeed beautifully from the beginning, most will need more time to integrate new skills into their lives and break old habits. Build a process of peer collaboration that is ongoing, and let that process provide the opportunity for consolidation and integration of new learning over time.

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