I had an interesting conversation with a young teacher a few days ago. She felt quite strongly that professional development for teachers ("PD") should be free, and as a result she refused to and would refuse to pay which she claimed is a common position amongst her peers. This of course raises several interesting questions.
The first is to distinguish between required PD and non-required, ie PD which the school or district mandates. Examples of this are CPR and First Aid training, child protection training, training in new programs or texts or equipment. In this case, I agree with my younger colleague because it is clearly necessary for the school to have teachers who know what they are doing and what do to. If a school is to run like a well-oiled machine, all its parts needs to be in tip-top condition.
Which prompts a second question, timing. If the PD is mandated and necessary to the school, then arguably it should be held within working hours, although often it is not. My sense is that this should be negotiated, for example a Saturday morning CPR training would replace two after-school meetings or a half-day off during one of the pre-semester planning and training weeks.
This is of course a minefield where a teacher is never available on a Saturday morning because of another commitment. The only option here might be to find a course during the school day and then to arrange a substitute. As a principal, I made certain that all required training occurred in our pre-semester planning and training weeks, or during after-school meeting time. A few things are not possible, for example program-related conferences or state subject-area training days and these would be built into the calendar and the substitute budget.
The third question concerns voluntary PD which is useful to the school, for example an English teacher taking a course on Shakespeare or a Physics teacher attending seminars on the latest planetary physics findings. This is clearly negotiable, and of course the value lies not only in the increased subject-area knowledge but also in the increased interest and enthusiasm of the teacher. In this case, there is a range from full-support to very little support, although in my view since it is not required by the school the teacher should be contributing some if not the majority of the funds.
I had two approaches to this. One was to have a budgeted amount for discretionary PD for which teachers could apply and which had a clear process and clear priorities. The other was a quid pro quo approach where the teacher receiving support would provide something to the school which I thought would be useful. I remember supporting an elementary math teacher in her masters program and in return, she ran an after-school math club for middle school students based on problem-solving. A middle school science teacher I supported to a physics conference ran the after-school Science Fair club, which led to us as a school winning the regional contest.
Now I think about it, I had a third approach. In several cases, I offered to refund part of the course of a course and fully the cost of an examination if the teacher passed. I remember a foreign language teacher who wanted the next level certification and at the end of the semester, she showed me her "A" and I gave her a check.
The fourth question is where the PD is of no value to the school. I have both declined to support this and supported it through the PD fund mentioned above, mostly for the goodwill or to reward service and of course. Usually however, I would guide such a desire towards something which would benefit the school as well so all would gain.
Another important question to consider is the time, effort, knowledge and experience of the presenter which should be compensated. PD is in fact never "free", someone must pay and I firmly believe that as educators, many of our greatest resources are our colleagues. If teacher A is to provide PD to teacher B, s/he should be compensated for doing so. My younger colleague had not considered this, but when she did her response was to agree, but to affirm it should not be her.
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