Professional Development

Professional development is a lot less about going to see an expert and a lot more about exploring things and the impact they have on student learning.

You’ve likely been a student-teacher. You’ll likely have a student-teacher too. But you’ve probably never been given training about how to host one well.

I recently observed a high school science lesson that left me feeling like I had just swished some super-minty Listerine. I was refreshed. I was inspired…so much so, in fact, that I built and entire upcoming PD session around my takeaway from this lesson. I will return to this in just a moment.

Teaching is a great responsibility. I teach English and believe that the ability to communicate, at a personal and societal level, is what builds strong communities and ensures ownership over one’s future. Thus, it’s important that we teachers spend a lot of time on our craft—deliberating the best ways to teach and make lessons fun, interactive, and relatable to students. Professional development thrives on discipline pedagogy and school departments meet to align goals and assignments and to discuss data assessment.

Volunteer travelling—dubbed "voluntourism"—has become very popular in the last 25 years. Voluntourists want to travel, learn, and contribute to something meaningful.