The Best PD Is Often Next Door

As far as impactful PD goes, there's not much that can compete with sitting in on the practice of one of the colleagues in your own building.

Once in a while, it's helpful to identify some folks that you might like watching. You can do things like:

• Poll your students: Who is a teacher you’ve had who is very good at _________?
• Ask around to your colleagues: Who is a teacher in our building who is very good at _________?
• Ask some students randomly selected from your rosters: Tell me about a teacher in our building who is pretty darn good at their job?

(Fill in those blanks with an area of practice you'd like to get better at. For a list of areas that have a high impact on Credibility, see this post.)

Then, you just take the colleagues whose names you've heard via the methods above and you say, “Hey, I'm trying to get better. What do you teach during [insert your prep hour]? Could I pop in sometime and see what I can pick up?”

At this point in my career, I can't even count how many times watching math or theater or science or art or tech ed teachers has given me insights into how to work better with students in my own discipline.

Also it's fun.

Give it a shot.

Best,

DSJR