“Doing Better”: A Blended Professional Growth Space

One of the reasons that I love my staff is that they have a fantastic sense of humour, and part of that humour is reclaiming social media slander for our own use. Last year, we were roasted (as I am sure many of you have been) by an angry stakeholder online. In conclusion, they stated, “DO BETTER!” — hence the name of my Google Classroom: “Doing Better”: Kelliher Staff Professional Growth”.

This course is a blended learning opportunity for teaching and support staff to engage in professional learning together in lieu of traditional, long, monthly, sit-down meetings. My colleagues teach across a broad range of curricula and plan for predominantly triple grade splits. Our school has a vulnerable designation due to the socio-economic status of our community, as well as our distance from essential services. Many of our students suffer from inequitable outcomes due to opportunity gaps in their lives and/or trauma. Because we have so few service available to support families, the school often functions as the only social security net in the area, where the staff fill the gap through extensive volunteer work. In addition to caring for our students and family, staff have their own children and commitments.

Surveying staff throughout the year indicates that while they feel the culture of the building is positive, the culture of the profession is burnt out due to increasing classroom complexity and limited resources.  Staff often feel overwhelmed by meetings and professional development when they give so much everyday to their students. As such, staff miss many meetings, sacrificing time to positively network with staff, keep up with best practice in education, or build skills required to meet the needs of increasingly complex classrooms. This results in frustration and hopelessness. We need to DO BETTER!

I hope to use a blended format to decrease scheduled time, increase teacher choice and voice in professional development and increase opportunities for staff to co-construct goals, positively network with staff and collaborate with a learning community to find hope in our tough setting. Meetings must be purposeful, concise and flexible. Half of the meetings will be done in person (with the option to tune in online), and the other half will be scheduled on the teacher’s own time with their group, or alone. Major learning outcomes include:

• Take Action to Build Community and Relational Capital
• Appraise Learning Improvement Framework & Construct Professional Goals
• Understand and Apply Response to Intervention & Plan for Student Connection
• Evaluate and Implement Supporting Student Assessment in Saskatchewan 
• Collaborate to Design Student Advisory Blocks, referencing Framework for Student Success, Achievement and Graduation
• Explore and Implement Culturally Responsive Instruction
• Review Local Data, Critique Learning Improvement Goals and Report to the Learning Improvement Plan

I work with the most selfless and dedicated people in the world. I cannot imagine asking them to give me more of their time on my schedule. There is a need for more teacher voice, choice and for increased flexibility to participate in professional learning. This important topic is often perceived as, “one more thing to do,” but without it, teacher isolation and hopelessness can take over. There is lots to learn, and much opportunity for fine tuning our practice and growing in our abilities to become more effective through intentional instructional design. There are undiscovered passions waiting to captivate us and motivate us! And, on those bad days, there is the team to lean on.

I am excited to plan this course to better meet the professional learning needs of the amazing people I work with!