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Leadership Development Plan

Planning Project
1-Year Staff Development Plan

Lauren Le
Dr. Bindman
ETEC 530
6 May 2021
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Leadership Development Plan
Background:

The entire world is currently going through a pandemic.  As the dangers of the pandemic rose,
schools closed last year in 2020.  Students and teachers were forced to attend school virtually. 
This has shifted the dynamic of technology in education.  It turned technology from being a tool
to being a necessity.  The Long Beach Unified School District has just reopened its campuses for
hybrid instruction this April in 2021.  As there has been a decrease in COVID cases over the
recent months, it looks possible that students may be required to come back to school unless they
transfer to another school to continue their education.  As schools have been closed for a little
over a year in LBUSD, it is important to understand the challenges of teaching students when
they all return. The district purchased Canvas, a learning management system, to allow all
teachers and students to navigate their learning together.  Through the pandemic, teachers and
students learned how to use Canvas to engage in school. 

To provide emphasis on the learning management system and its usage in school, teachers were
paid to go to Canvas training the week before the first week of school.  Teachers had to learn a
brand-new learning management system that proved difficult for some due to the lack of
technological knowledge and resistance to technology.  These trainings taught teachers the basis
of the management system: how to create assignments, how to change the gradebook
preferences, how to send messages.  The following week, teachers were required to use
Canvas and no other learning management system with students (such as Google Classroom
and Schoolloop).

Additionally, the district and school site provided professional development opportunities toward
the beginning of the year to help teach teachers obtain new skills and strategies to use in virtual
learning.  Long Beach Polytechnic High School purchased NearPod and PearDeck for all
teachers to use in the classroom.  Subsequently, teachers attended professional development
opportunities to learn how to use NearPod and PearDeck to increase engagement in the virtual
classroom.

There were a lot of software used during virtual learning such as Canvas, PearDeck, and
NearPod that have been supported by the school and district to engage student learning. Long
Beach Polytechnic High School’s mission statement states: “To support the personal and
intellectual success of every LB Poly student, every day” (n.d.). 

According to the district’s website on the professional development page, the district takes a
standard from the Quality Professional Learning Standards as their purpose statement:

Professional learning standards are the cornerstone of quality professional learning,

identifying essential elements of quality professional [development] that cut across
specific content knowledge, pedagogical skills, and dispositions (n.d.).

With the inclusion of the district’s purpose statement, it is important to increase the quality of
professional learning especially as education has shifted because of the global pandemic. The
professional development plan seeks to serve all teachers across all disciplines to enhance their
teaching in a world where students are more comfortable with using technology. It is not
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Leadership Development Plan
realistic to revert into a world without technology to help learning and teaching. The
professional development plan is set to meet students where they are.
The 1-year staff development plan is to create engagement strategies with technology to remind
teachers to use them as tools in the classroom as students are now back in the physical
classroom. This plan is to help navigate teachers from teaching solely online to finding a
compromise to still teach effectively with the help of technology and to not let technology dictate
the teaching in the classroom. Afterall, teachers teach with the assistance of technology.

Needs Assessment:

Education has changed. The pandemic brought into the light the inequities of education.
Understanding the rise of technology use, students are going to come back to school after
learning virtually for a year. There is a need for this professional development plan to help
teachers remember how useful technology is without letting it take over the teaching in the
classroom.   Teachers teach the classroom, not technology or the internet. Additionally, it is
important to understand the need to support teachers that grudgingly despise technology.
Hopefully, their feelings toward technology will not dismiss using technology because students
now know how to use it as a tool in the classroom.  Students now engage in learning in a
different manner, so it is vital to meet students where they are.

With the understanding of learning loss and inequities of education due to the lack of
technological resources as a result of the pandemic, technology within the classroom can be used
properly. Technology can help bring students up to speed with missed content or skills while
also getting support from teachers to troubleshoot technological problems because they are in the
same physical space as them.

Goals:

The overarching goal of this professional development plan is to increase teacher buy-in with
technology to support students’ levels of engagement. Again, students have learned virtually for
a year and dismissing technology with the return of school may be challenging for students.
Students have already learned how to learn effectively with the help of technology. Teachers
need to understand that to help increase engagement after a year of virtual learning. There will be
four main goals of this one-year-staff-development-plan. The need for this professional
development plan is to remind and help teachers of the tools technology can give in a classroom
that now has more technologically skilled students to increase engagement.  

The allotted time for this development plan is a year.  Teachers will meet four times a year in
their cohort group.  These groups will be created with a survey allowing teachers to express their
comfortability within groups.  There will be three groups: A-advanced, B-Intermediate, C-
beginner.  The PD’s that will be given throughout the year will have three different meeting
dates for each of the groups to cater to their needs.  The hope is to create an equitable learning
environment to allow teachers to feel the support they need to approach and engage in
technology. The meetings are to occur in the following months: August (before the schoolyear
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begins), November, February, and May. The duration of these meetings will be for a few hours,
or half a day, to hold engagement and to make it brief and meaningful.

To add, the cohorts will have different days to meet in that month. This professional
development plan has taken into consideration the number of substitutes needed to allow for the
meetings to occur. At Poly High School, there are a little bit over 180 teachers on campus. If
proportionally divided, there would be 3 cohorts of about 60 teachers per cohort. Thus,
acquiring 60 substitutes on campus for one day is more achievable than 180 substitute teachers.
To add on, the professional development meets will be for a few hours (half a day). This will
help with substitutes because substitutes can sub for a teacher of one cohort at the beginning of
the day and then switch to substitute for a teacher of another cohort for the rest of the day.
Within each cohort, there will be a lead team to help facilitate the meetings per cohort group.
The lead team will consist of one administrator and a teacher with confidence in technology to
help lead the professional development plan.

The first step in this professional development is to find three teams (one for each cohort group).
The following step is to send out a survey asking teachers to reflect on the previous year of
virtual and hybrid teaching. The survey would have the following questions:

1. What is your name?

2. What subjects and grades do you teach?
3. Given last year’s circumstances, did you enjoy teaching hybrid or virtual more?
Why?
4. Did you learn new tech tools to enhance your learning other than Canvas? If
yes, which ones?
5. On a scale from 1-10, how confident are you in using technology to help your
students?
6. With the return to regular in-person school, do you find it important to use
technology in the classroom? Why or why not?

The questions that are given on this survey before the creation of cohorts would allow the leaders
to get a better understanding of the feelings teachers may have as a result of teaching through the
pandemic. It is also important for leaders to acknowledge the feelings teachers may have
towards technology especially if there are any negative feelings to help comfort teachers during
this professional development. Question 5 will be the determining question that will put teachers
into their cohorts. If they answer 1-3, they would be in group A for beginners. If teachers
answer 4-7, they would be put into the cohort for B (intermediate) and teachers in cohort C
would have answered 8-10. It is predicted that there would be a lot of teachers for Group B,
which can be handled with increasing the number of leaders to help facilitate the meetings.

Goals’ Timeline

August Goal 1: As this is the start of the professional development plan, the goal
of the first meeting is to create an open environment for teachers to share
their thoughts and feelings on using technology in the classroom.
Teachers who will be within cohorts of like-minded colleagues, will be
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Leadership Development Plan
able to create a more approachable environment to learn from throughout
the year.
November Goal 2: After discussing and being comfortable with colleagues, the
second goal is to remind teachers of the functions of technology as a tool.
Additionally, teachers will be informed of student activities that can be
done with technology versus without technology.
February Goal 3: Teachers will now feel more comfortable supporting student
learning. Teachers will be knowledgeable on the ways students can show
what they have learned and how to navigate whichever medium a student
chooses (ex: Google Slides vs. cardboard presentation).
May Goal 4: At the end of this professional development journey, teachers
will be able to embed various technology platforms into Canvas.

Learning Activities:

September
 Learning Objective: Teachers will develop rapport within cohorts to increase
engagement and comfortability to approach the challenges of technology.

The first goal is set to meet in August, right before the school year begins. Assuming
that there will already be professional development opportunities, this will be one of
the required ones that staff will go to. To decompress from the tough year of teaching
prior, teachers will meet within their cohort groups to discuss the challenges of online
and hybrid teaching. Teachers will be facilitated by a lead teacher within their cohort
groups to just talk and share their thoughts and feelings. The main goal of the first
meeting is to allow teachers to reflect on the year prior to share what they have
learned and create an open space for respectful conversation. More importantly,
teachers will be within their cohort groups so sharing will feel more comfortable
because they will not fear being judged by teachers who have more advanced
knowledge with technology. Teachers should walk away from this first meeting
feeling encouraged to use technology as a tool in the classroom and reevaluate the
amount of technology to be used in the classroom. This will be done throughout all
three cohort meetings.

November
 Learning Objective: Teachers will understand when it is and is not necessary to
use technology in the classroom.

The second meet’s topic answers this question: When do teachers use technology?
Within their cohorts, teachers will discuss when it is appropriate to use technology
versus when it is not. Teachers will work together and list the many student activities
that can be done without technology but has been replaced with it because of the
pandemic. Next, teachers will discuss whether specific student activities can be done
without the help of technology. Within each of the cohort meetings, the leaders will
then be able to understand the level of technology that can be used by the teachers
within the group. An example would be using a collaborative tool such as Google
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Slides for group A versus something that needs more tech skills such as FlipGrid.
Furthermore, teachers will walk away from this meeting with further support in the
technology tools that can be used in support of student activities. These tools will not
take the place of the teacher, but to support student engagement within the classroom.
At the end of this meeting, teachers will leave with a list of tools that they may try in
their classrooms to support lessons. More importantly, there are so many tech tools
that support students who need scaffolding. For example, Google Translate can
efficiently support students who do not speak English as their primary language. The
variations with the cohort will depend on the skill level of the teachers to be more
supportive of teachers’ comfortability levels.

February
 Learning Objective: Teachers will feel comfortable supporting various ways
students can show that they have learned.

The third goal is to help increase teacher comfortability with technology to support
students. After learning virtually for a year, students have learned creatively how to
use technology to express what they have learned. It can be as simple as using the
rich context text editor in Canvas to creating appealing virtual posters with Google
Slides or Canva, a website full of templates to create posters. Depending on the
cohort, teachers will be able to learn how to access these tools and learn how to
manage them. The goal of this meeting in February is to increase comfortability with
technology in the case that students do want to submit work using technology.
Giving students a choice with expressing what they have learned increase
engagement while also providing variety so that students are able to think and learn
differently. Although teachers may receive student work that may be in a medium
that is new to them, it is important that teachers not feel as discouraged after this
professional development meet this month.

May
 Learning Objective: Teachers will be able to approach Canvas with more
confidence in terms of embedding various platforms into the management system.

The final goal of this professional development plan is to help teachers incorporate
various platforms into the learning management system, Canvas. After being more
susceptible to support with technology and being able to support and trouble students
with the various technology tools that they use, teachers will now be able to embed in
new software into the management system. The final step of this professional
development plan seeks to allow teachers to feel that they are the agents of
controlling the usage of technology in the classroom. Teachers will now be able to
confidently incorporate technology into the classroom while understanding when it is
a helpful tool to use. Embedding other technological platforms in the management
system will increase engagement because it will provide a variety of ways for
students to show what they have learned. It will also support the different student
levels within the classroom. Most importantly, teachers will know what to expect of
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Leadership Development Plan
their students. Therefore, understanding how to use a technology tool will also help
teachers create a more specific learning objective.

Evaluations:

The evaluation process will occur after each of the meetings. There will be three lead teams, one
for each of the cohort. The lead team will help facilitate the learning process. They will find
time to meet after the professional development days to discuss and debrief the troubles and
celebrations the cohorts had during the meetings. Most importantly, the lead team will discuss
means in how they can better support teachers in the following professional development
meeting. If there are things that some teachers need support that are time sensitive, the lead
teams can come together and put a resource page so that teachers can refer to when exploring
technology within the classroom.

Within the evaluation meetings, the lead team will also evaluate the brief survey teachers will
answer as an exit ticket to the professional development meetings. The questions on this survey
will include:

1. On a scale from 1-5 (1- I learned nothing, 5- All the information was informative),
how much did you learn from the professional development meeting?
2. Please provide one resource, tool, or advice that you felt that was the most valuable?
3. Please provide a constructive feedback for the lead team.

With teacher feedback, the lead team will be able to better sculpt the future professional
development meetings.

Moreover, the lead team can come and support teachers in their classroom. As the lead team
may consist of teachers, it would be important to understand that when arranging meeting times
with teachers on campus.

Budget:

The budget for this 1-year professional development plan is going to come from Title 1 funds or
the General Fund to support teachers and their development with technology. The funding for
this plan is mainly needed for substitutes. Given that there are 180 teachers on campus, it would
be a bad idea to get all of the teachers covered at one time by a substitute. The creation of
cohorts will also help relieve this pressure. It costs about $150 a day for a substitute. The
professional development plan meeting duration is for a few hours, so half a day.

The plan is to have three different days per goal to have teachers meet within their cohort groups.
Group A, B, and C will have their own days. However, within those days, the cohort groups will
be divided into two. Thus, there will be a Group A morning meet and a Group A afternoon meet.
If divided proportionally, there will be 90 subs needed for each goal meeting. After calculating,
it would cost $14,400. There are four meets for this plan bringing the total to $57,600 just for
substitutes for the entire campus.
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Leadership Development Plan
To factor into the budget, the lead teachers will need time to plan for their roles. It will cost
approximately $50/hour per lead teacher (that is the average given the teacher’s hourly). Given
that there would be approximately 6 teachers and teachers will spend 3 hours for each meeting
(debriefing and planning), it would cost $3,600 to pay for the lead teachers.

The grand budget for this 1-year staff development plan is $61,200 roughly.

Conclusion:

After teaching virtually through a global pandemic and going to multiple professional
developments to receive support with using technology to teach students, it is very important to
create a year-long professional development opportunity that will discuss how to use technology
within the classroom after teachers and students have been using it for a year. This plan is to
help teachers retain their technological skills learned throughout the pass year and feel
encouraged to try more technology skills while also understanding that technology is just a tool
within the classroom.

Teachers, just like students, have various skill sets especially when it comes to technology.
Therefore, the creation of the lead teams will help facilitate the professional development
opportunities in respect to the cohorts. The cohorts are crucial in this plan because teachers may
have underlying feelings towards technology because of the past year but may feel more eager to
learn and engage with the uses of technology when surrounded with like-minded individuals.

The schedule to meet four times a year with a few hours each time is also effective because it
keeps it brief. Humans learn better when they are not learning about a content for too long.
Their attention is better retained. This will also help with receiving substitutes on campus since
there are so many teachers at this school site.

The budget is worth the amount of meaningful development these teachers will be more
apprehensive to technology and be more aware with how to navigate technology as a tool within
the classroom. It is also important to understand how many teachers this plan will need to
support because the campus is so big. Therefore, the budget is acceptable for this professional
development plan.

This plan will prove to be very effective because it will help teachers approach education after a
year of teaching virtual. Teachers are going to have to discover a new norm in their classroom
with the help of technology. This plan will serve to help teachers find normalcy and consistency
within their classrooms.
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Leadership Development Plan
References

Mashburn, Deron. (n.d.). Professional Development. Long Beach Schools - Professional

Development: Professional Development Standards.
https://www.lbschools.net/Departments/Professional_Development/prof_dev_standards.cf
m.

Vision Statement. (n.d.). https://lbpoly.schoolloop.com/Mission.