Professional Time Wasters?

Ok, so I’m surprised. The complaint du jour this morning in the coffee room was the professional development/workshop push in my school this year. The take was that the new administration values professional development or attendance at workshops above classroom teaching. Since most of those expressing this viewpoint are people older than me, who have , mostly, been teaching longer than me (I have 25 years) maybe I’ve not been around long enough to believe that my attendance at a workshop will add nothing to my practice upon my return . Maybe I have yet to be convinced that my presence in the classroom is utterly vital for student learning every day. (Ironically, today, I’m subbing in a foreign language class for a teacher who is away (though not at a workshop), and if the assignment left is any indication, maybe teacher presence IS utterly vital to any learning.)
I know that they will bitch no matter what, and that bitching doesn’t necessarily indicate a deep level of resistance, but what does that complaining really say? It says that
A. their experience of professional development or workshops has been largely negative, and
B. that they see no connection between their learning and their students’ learning, and
C. that all the lip service we pay to “developing lifelong learners” is just that: lip service.
Yes, there’s plenty of worthless professional development out there. Just as there is plenty of worthless classroom practice.
Another thing I find disturbing is found in this remark: “Just tell me where to go and I’ll go there” -- no agency of the learner/teacher in this case at all. There’s no desire to learn being expressed, no excitement about learning, and no effort to seek out opportunities for learning. Wake up, folks. We have no reason to complain about our students’ apathy toward learning if they see it reflected in us every day!
So there are some things to tackle here – both locally and in the big picture.
Issues for us – clarifying the intent of the professional development focus, strengthening the expectation, and finding worthwhile opportunities so change can be modeled.
Issues for education at large: improving the quality of available professional development , creating a school year schedule that doesn’t require robbing classroom time to make room for PD activities.