PD Plan

The Story Behind my Story

WHY?

I grew up living in the inner city. We played basketball in the street with everyone in the neighborhood and that's about all we did besides riding bikes. When I started school as a kindergartner I went to a private school and realized all my friends at school looked and acted very differently than my friends at home in my neighborhood. I did not want to sit in class all day long and try to read. I wanted to go to recess so we could get outside and finally play basketball.

I wanted to play basketball because it was easy for me. It was what I was used to and it was fun. I always struggled academically in school. It was not a lack of trying that caused me to struggle through school, I it was the lack of identity and ownership I took or that was given. It was the lack of collaboration and implementation of change. I was not a textbook child, no matter how hard I tried to be. My parents read to me all my life and I read/looked at pictures in books everyday, but reading was just hard for me. It just took at lot of time and work.

In fifth grade my parents split up and my sister and I ended up going to a new school. Man, was that hard. It was like my world came crashing down right in front of me. Everything I had learned my entire life seemed like a lie. Going to a Christian school, church, and Sunday school, now suddenly none of that stuff mattered. Half way through fifth grade my teacher realized I could not read. Instead of letting me fall further through the cracks, Mrs. Wetter's got me a reading coach. This reading coach made me think I liked trying to read. She made me care about reading. She made it interesting and fun. She gave me a purpose, motivation, and ownership. For once I thought, "Maybe school wasn't so bad after all."

I was one of those students that needed a purpose, a goal. I am now one of those administrators and tech specialist that realizes how important it is for staff and student to have a goal. To take ownership and to collaborate. I am motivated to motivate my staff and students because of Mrs. Wetters. I want to motivate teachers to effectively integrate technology into their everyday teaching. I want teachers to be able to test out different programs and ways to use technology in their classroom with teammates. I want teachers to be able to collaborate, learn from each other, and share their own ideas.

My idea of teaching 9 hours of professional learning to my staff on technology integration started all with this entire COVID situation we are in now. I realized my staff did not understand or know how to effectively integrate technology into their classes let alone virtually teach. We have some of the best teachers in the world in our school, but when it came to remote and virtual teaching, they had zero self confidence. Over developing the professional development, I realized I need to start at the basics and move forward. I set the goals and am working my way backwards.

WHAT?

The staff will be invited to an hour professional learning every other week. The technology integration tools taught and demonstrated are getting started with Chromebooks and an introduction to Chromebooks. Next getting started with Google Drive and then going right into tips and tricks. During these sessions' technology will be demonstrated, modeled, collaboration will occur, and strategies to start implementation of technology will happen. Here is A Call to Action.

HOW?

I had a difficult time starting my call to action presentation. I started by thinking about all the platforms I could use. I then decided to put all those thoughts aside and think about what I really wanted to convey. What was I passionate about? Once I figured that out, I thought about what types of images I could use to make people interested in seeing what I had to say. I need to capture their attention. Many of us educators are in the same boat with remote and virtual learning. Many times, it seems like even though we are in the same boat, we're all sinking. I realized my staff struggled with the day to day use of technology while teaching.

I decided on using adobe spark. I began to write a script. I had just come off three days of professional development that I did not teach, and it was exhausting. I was exhausted from sitting in a chair all day listening and watching two people talk at me. I was not engaged and found myself starting to fall asleep one hour into the day. When I looked around, I could see I was not the only one. After creating my script, I took the key words and created slides with a video clip or an image for each key word I chose. Once my slides were created, I recorded my voice overs for each slide. I tried to instill passion, a sense of urgency, and motivation.

I stayed after school extra hours every day so I could complete my work in my own classroom. Working from my own classroom at school made me feel more motivated about my topic and gave me a change to reflect through what I was recording. I sat at my desk with my laptop in front of me. All the desks in my room empty, and three people left in the school building after an exhausting day of work. There were some slides I had to record the audio multiple times to get them to sound right. When I finished the video, I felt a sense of relief. I felt as if I had accomplished huge things. I felt like I had already motivated my staff to change, to be excited about learning new teaching methods, and to be excited to instill that same ownership and motivation in their students.