I wish I could bottle the inspiration I felt after listening to Bruce Morgan, Debbie Miller, and Ellin Keene at a recent NCTE presentation. They spoke about professional learning experiences that are successful and promote sustainability. Bruce and Debbie agreed that in their experience as classroom teachers, the most powerful professional development experiences were those in which they have had opportunities to reflect on and talk about their instructional practices with colleagues. Ellin Keene shared that the professional learning experiences that are most successful have a "spirit of experimentation."

As I sat listening to this presentation, I thought about professional development within my school. We do many things to promote collaboration among colleagues, as well experiences that support a spirit of experimentation. But I had to ask myself, would the same collaboration and experimental spirit survive if I left the district? This can't be about what I do as a coach. It has to do with what we do as a team of educators at our school beyond any one person. How can we work together as a teaching community to share responsibility for professional development?

Bringing Up New Leadership to Sustain Initiatives

Over the last year I have been thinking hard about this question and working to bring teachers on board with more responsibility for our PD initiatives. For example, last year when I developed the new teacher group, I asked Leslie Lloyd (a third-grade teacher) to co-facilitate this group with me. The administration agreed, and released her from the classroom once a month to help lead the new teacher group during their release days and observations.

Another way I am working to build sustainability and collaborative leadership is in the design of professional development offered on district in-service days. We no longer follow a traditional workshop format, with someone from inside or outside the district presenting materials to us. Instead, we have moved to a structure that better reflects the inquiry and conversation that is achieved through our study groups.

We now have the teachers facilitate short sessions around a focused topic that last about twenty minutes. We break ourselves into small groups and rotate through each topic, using a stations or centers model of sharing during these professional development days. It is all about teachers sharing with teachers.

This year we are focusing on a strategic reading framework. All of our short sessions led by the teachers focus on topics that lend themselves to our broader goal as a school and district goal of literacy. It is not "show-and-tell" or glitzy projects.

Organizing for Teacher-Led Professional Development Workshops

How did teachers rotate through these short presentations? How many times did each teacher have to present their workshop? We broke the sessions into two parts. Presenters each had to present three times. Agendas were color coded (pink, yellow, and blue). The color of the agenda directed which session each participant began with. You can download a copy of the one-page schedule here:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/sustainagenda.pdf

For example, if you had a blue agenda, you would start at session #3 and then rotate to session #1, ending with session #2 for your last session of the first rotation. This would then be repeated for the second group of workshops.

We broke the six workshops into two larger rotations so that presenters would not have to present six times, and also so that they too could participate in some of the sessions. The sessions were designed to last 15 minutes, with an additional five minutes built in for moving to the next session.

How did I select the topics or teachers for these sessions? The building principal Harriet Trafford and I brainstormed literacy strategies that fit within our school goals and also could lend themselves to a short presentation. At the same time, we were thinking of teachers that are strong in these different areas of instruction. We all have strengths and gifts to share. The selected teachers were asked if they would be willing to create a mini-session for their peers. Teachers were open to the idea, and I helped them behind the scenes with materials and resources for their sessions.

Although I did some coaching before the professional development day, teachers really took the lead in developing their sessions. For example, I suggested the video for the teacher presenting on the strategy of Turn and Talk. But the teacher was the one who took the time to rewatch the video and then chose the video clip that she wanted to share with the staff. She also created two-column notes for participants to use as they viewed the video. This was exciting to me, since I had been using two-column notes with the staff for years - many of those years this strategy was not embraced by staff. To see staff now choosing to incorporate these in their sessions was energizing.

At another session, a second-year teacher shared how she launches writing workshop. She demonstrated how she models her personal writing with students. I had worked with her in her classroom all last year using mentor texts for craft lessons and modeling my personal writing with students to help her create an infrastructure for writing workshop. She demonstrated how she started up writing workshop this year and had made changes to the original model to make it her own. She brought her favorite mentor texts for launching writing workshop, as well as her own writing that she has used with her students. I loved seeing the transfer of our work last year, and how this teacher has internalized and revised writing workshop to fit her own style and passions in the classroom.

You can download sample descriptions of the first rotation sessions at this link:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/sustainrotate.pdf

The teacher-led sessions were a huge success. I couldn't believe how many of the teachers incorporated two-column notes into their sessions.

In our whole-group debrief everyone described this as an ideal district inservice event, designed to share and celebrate the strategies that we are working on in our classrooms. As one teacher said, "We learn so much from one another."

An important factor for the success of this format is that all teachers within the school have the opportunity to present a session within the school year. We would run into trouble if the same teachers were always asked to present to peers. It would make other staff feel that they must not be "good enough," a feeling too many of us have already in this insecure profession. We have several more district days set aside throughout the year, so we will continue to use this format for these days and will tap the expertise of other staff members, so that everyone has the opportunity to present their expertise to colleagues.

I am learning to let go and stand back as the staff takes more control of our professional development days. I want the work of our school to continue when I leave, or my responsibilities change over time and I need to turn over tasks to colleagues. As I move forward within another school year of new possibilities, I will hold onto the inspirational words of Bruce Morgan, Debbie Miller, and Ellin Keene. I will work with colleagues to create professional development structures that will sustain themselves over time, and that involve a spirit of experimentation for all.