What STEM Professional Development do teachers need right now?

Something is changing in the way our educators are demanding professional learning. They are demanding and deserving professional learning that trusts them as an expert, gives them time and connects them with each other.

Educators know that STEM, Project Based Learning and Design Thinking are the way we need to be teaching our students moving forward. And educators who do not know, need to try it in order to figure it out.

As we talk to over 2,000 educators this year, we hear them all saying we just want time. Time to plan, time to organize, time to process. It is not impossible to make more time. Administrators need to actively be looking at ways to remove tasks from educators' plates - lunch duty, pick up duty, bulletin boards, reports, drills, meetings, phone calls, purchasing complications, testing, data collection & analysis and more. Administrators also can look at funds that can pay teachers from professional development outside of their school day and allow teachers time to plan during these periods. One of the schools we worked with this year the teachers requested project based learning training. What the administrators did was pay teachers for 5 sessions that were 2 hours long each. One of these hours was a short mini lesson on a step of PBL and then a sharing conversation about how they were making progress in the PBL project they were implementing with their students and the second hour was for planning with the opportunity to have a one on one conversation with the trainer. Teachers felt support, learned from each other and had the time and brain space to build great projects.

Teacher colleagues are actually the most valuable resources of professional learning experiences. This is not new news. Professional learning communities have been around for years, however, I believe a lot of them have gotten lost in the pandemic and a lot of them have gotten off track. With an experts guiding these conversations, asking big idea questions to the group and allowing everyone the opportunity to give advice and feedback to each other. These groups can prosper.

Trust & risk taking are the most important things an administrator can give to their teachers. Trust they are doing the best possible job for kids. Trust that they have the skills necessary to do the job. Trust that they will use their time wisely. Allow them to take risks. Encourage them to take risks and try something new. Let them know they will not be penalized for trying a new instructional strategy that did not work out great.

To evaluate the effectiveness of PBL projects, administrators can offer time for teachers to meet with each other to discuss what worked well for them and what didn’t work well. Administrators could also offer a PBL coach to teachers that they can use for a reference as needed. This time would allow for improvements to be made in PBL projects and help teachers enhance their understanding of STEM subjects. Collaboration of PBL projects would connect teachers with each other while simultaneously promoting teamwork within the school. Trusting these teachers to develop the most effective way to share their knowledge with their students, and with other educators, will subsequently increase their confidence as educators.

Educators may also benefit from attending STEM based professional webinars throughout the year. Administrators can connect with different companies, includig WhyMaker, providing these webinars and compile a list of webinars that include the date, time, subject, and weblink of each one. Administrators can mandate that the educators attend a certain amount per year with paid time but encourage them to choose the webinars that spark their interest or will be beneficial for their classroom and their particular PBL project.

The biggest thing administrators can do for educators is to provide them with a variety of resources and endless support. An environment that promotes professional development with an emphasis on the educators’ needs is bound to have a positive reaction from educators.

‍