Discussions

Your Name and Title: Jared Scherz, Ph.D., M.Ed. (CEO)

School or Organization Name: TeacherCoach, LLC

Co-Presenter Name(s):

Area of the World from Which You Will Present: New Jersey

Language in Which You Will Present: English

Target Audience(s): Educators and Education Supporters

Short Session Description (one line): Integrating Personal Growth with Professional Development

Full Session Description (as long as you would like): Integrating Personal Growth with Professional Development: Creating The Reflective Practitioner

Websites / URLs Associated with Your Session: www.teachercoach.com

This is a workshop for teachers, administrators, and professional trainers. All three groups will appreciate that our current model for professional development is antiquated, requiring a new paradigm to support educators through the turbulence of educational reform. As a clinical psychologist and author of several books on schools, I am proposing a new model for teacher development.

Stressed students, means learning suffers. Stressed teachers, means learning suffers. Traditional PD neglects self-care, limiting educator’s potential for excellence. Through role-play and experiment, participants will learn to become reflective practitioners or help to develop them. Participants will learn about the three dimensions of organizational health: adaptation, climate, and infrastructure, creating strong school cultures, which reflective practitioners help to cultivate.

Participants will be helped to appreciate how to incorporate the three R’s into their PD, so that educators can have their social-emotional needs attended to as part of every training. Trainers need to learn about resistance, a natural force that limits the retention and assimilation of new information. Trainers need to learn about their own style as a trainer and how to meet the needs of the educator instead of providing scripted commentary and strategies to implement.

While rigor, relevance, and relationships (the three small r’s for students) are helpful for guiding teachers in how they perceive students, Respect, Reflection, and Resources (the three Big R’s for teachers) are how administrators (and teacher’s themselves) need to look upon their own development as a professional.

Participants in this workshop will learn to appreciate:

Respect

Teachers need to be treated like professionals, offered meaningful feedback but allowed and encouraged to provide input of their own. If adjustments are needed, they are informed not punished or demeaned. They need administrators who recognize their job is to support the learning process, not micromanage it. A little bit of appreciate goes a long way for an educator.

Reflection

Teachers need to see themselves clearly in relation to others. A reflective practitioner is one who can look inward and understand who they are and what they need. A reflective teacher practitioner is able to understand how their life experiences impact who they are and how they teach, able to make adjustments to better serve their clients.

Resources

Teachers need resources to do their jobs well. If teachers are paying for supplies, unable to connect with others who can help guide and support, or recreating the wheel because they don’t have access to tools and tips to do their jobs easier, they will use up valuable time and energy that can be spent with self-care and preparation.