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School Professional Development Analysis

Aaron Mckee

Grand Canyon University College of Education

EAD-523: Developing Professional Capacity

Dr. Reid Amones

Due: August 24, 2022

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I chose to analyze and evaluate the professional development (PD) program in my school.

This year, I was primarily responsible for the planning and implementation of how the

professional development program was orchestrated, though our admin team was involved in

coordinating rooms, some outside speakers, and food. We wanted this year’s PD to align to the

school mission and vision to promote professional preparation for enhanced student-centered

learning. That evaluated experience allows for more growth and higher potential.

As I think about the principal’s role in terms of the development of the overall school

environment and teachers’ professional abilities, I realize that a lot of this hinges on their

personal growth and transformation because the team will only go as far as the leader. Another

reason is that the models and tools that they choose to use serve to develop greater capacity

within the staff of an organization. Their actions impact and seek to develop the classroom

environment and teachers’ individual instructional abilities as they implement best practices in

PD Development (From Intuition to Data: Using Logic Models to Measure Professional

Developm...: GCU Library Resources - All Subjects, 2022).

The teachers’ needs were involved in the development of the various sessions as they

coordinated with admin about their CPR certification needs. The lead teachers are also connected

with the admin about department meetings and induction training needs. The staff teachers also

played a critical role in the dissemination of feedback during the sessions and the complexities of

the group sharing projects who will decide on the group tasks and how will they choose to

encourage and develop the interdependence for team opportunities, and how we can all learn

from having multiple open-ended solutions during discussion time. This will enhance the

capacity of our staff as we pull toward data-driven decision making that will increase student-

centered learning (Alansari & Rubie-Davies, 2021).

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Our professional development program is a part of our two-week overall teacher in

service weeks. PD is a master key to accomplishing our goals as they are in line with the

school’s Continuous Improvement Plan. I have found that it is recommended that The PD should

align with the goals of a school district's Comprehensive Continuous Improvement Plan (CCIP)

and that it should be high quality, paced yet rigorous, and primarily classroom focused. This

process is one way that PD can have a lasting and positive influence on curriculum and the

teacher's performance in the classroom (The How and Why of OMEA’s High Quality

Professional Development Program.: GCU Library Resources - All Subjects, 2012). For this

year’s PD, we began by discussing our culture as a school and 8 steps to improve it. We also

ended up spending our large group allotment of time discussing and ideating about how to

embed our mission and vision into the classes and programs of the school including all areas

where the teacher will be the primary influencer. We also sought to role play and brainstorm in

small groups through difficult situations in a classroom and how to best respond to maintain the

order of the learning environment. Teachers were able to dialog and seek out best practices from

each other while also getting direction from our facilitator. Lastly, the staff spent time looking at

data and delved deeper into what story the data told, what it meant for our S.W.O.T. (Strengths,

Weaknesses, Opportunities, & Threats), and what the next steps would mean for our team.

Our PD program emphasized research-based instructional/best practices this year through

a detailed analysis of our teacher observation process and what we are looking for in professional

practice. We looked at the evaluation instrument that we would be using, and how each

classroom teacher will be assessed according to it. This was done so that our teachers will be

able to give quality classroom rigor by our standards, with an understanding that observation has

the potential to positively affect their instruction. We still do the observations because many
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teachers may have increased chances to change their practices because of having been through

observation and evaluation (de Lima & Silva, 2017). Research has suggested that if PD is one

time only, then development opportunities are not incredibly successful. While we share new

Ideas, if there is no continuity, no follow-up, and no real opportunity to integrate the freshly

learned strategies, or reflect on how effective they are, then basically the teacher is left on their

own to decide whether to continue or implement the new strategy (Creating Communities of

Professional Practice in the Correctional Education...: GCU Library Resources - All Subjects,

2022).
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References

Alansari, M., & Rubie-Davies, C. M. (2021). Enablers and barriers to successful implementation

of cooperative learning through professional development. education sciences, 11(7),

312. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci11070312

Ávila de Lima, J., & Maria João, T. S. (2018). Resistance to classroom observation in the context

of teacher evaluation: teachers’ and department heads’ experiences and perspectives.

Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, 30(1), 7-26.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11092-017-9261-5

Creating communities of professional practice in the correctional education...: gcu library

resources - all subjects. (2022). Oclc.org. https://eds-s-ebscohost-

com.lopes.idm.oclc.org/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=7&sid=f18df861-d8d0-4bd9-a444-

f7af3432d38e%40redis

From intuition to data: using logic models to measure professional development: gcu library

resources - all subjects. (2022). Oclc.org. https://eds-p-ebscohost-

com.lopes.idm.oclc.org/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=7&sid=4b3e7100-1d90-46fb-

9443-f750bfbaa98e%40redis

The how and why of OMEA’s high quality professional development program: gcu library

resources - all subjects. (2012). Oclc.org. https://eds-s-ebscohost-

com.lopes.idm.oclc.org/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=3&sid=f18df861-d8d0-4bd9-a444-

f7af3432d38e%40redis