geek.teacher

I’m pretty sure that Eric Juli asked probably the most important questions that we really need to address as Year 2 begins in earnest:

I’m wondering how you would set up an edcamp for all the teachers who wouldn’t ever participate in an edcamp? Can you use this model with teachers who don’t use the tools to ever hear about an edcamp? Can you use this model to help teachers who struggle to meet their students’ needs?

I think we’re all feeling this way a bit, whether we come from a poor urban district or a rich suburban district. People on Twitter and who attend Edcamps are a self-selected group. This is completely by design. I discussed this a bit with Bill Ferriter a while back, but early on in the planning process, we made some serious decisions in support of our vision of what Edcamp is and should be. Foremost among those was the decision to not pursue PD credits for Edcamp. In these early stages that we’re working in, Edcamp needs the high-energy, hungry for participation crowd. Without those kinds of participants, Edcamp falls flat on its face. Just think about it, for a second. An Edcamp with too many empty session slots is a ghost town by noon at the latest.

As both Eric and Bill rightly point out, the ones we’re not reaching are the ones who need good, dynamic, high energy PD the most.

So, if people aren’t demanding this kind of PD, how do we get them into it?

When our students aren’t quite ready to understand a new concept, what do we do? We scaffold. I see no reason why one wouldn’t do the same for professional development.

The most obvious pice of scaffolding that a district can provide is to manage the schedule. This could be a partial management (district seeds some sessions) or full (district determines all sessions). The key is to provide as many of the other things that make Edcamp a great day of PD:

• Teachers as leaders. You have a whole bunch of people in your schools right now who know awesome stuff and use it in their classrooms every day. For the love of all that is holy, tap that resource. Unless you have something very new coming down the pipeline, you probably don’t need to pay some high-priced consultant tons of money to fly in to the rescue. If anything, you’re better off spending money to send people to conferences or to classes so they’ll bring their expertise back.
• Inquiry and discussion are viable and valuable means of learning. Sure, some of the best sessions I’ve been to have been led by people who are knowledgeable and passionate about the subject matter. But I’ve seen just as many awesome sessions which are run by people who just want to learn more about a particular topic or tool and invite others to join them in the pursuit of knowledge.
• Differentiate, differentiate, differentiate. When the inmates run the asylum at an Edcamp, sessions tend to differentiate very quickly based on the interests, needs, and abilities of the participants. If you’re providing the same PD for everybody, you’re going to insult the people who could run the PD and go over the head of people who need more hand-holding. Too many people I’ve known hate PD because they felt their time was wasted or they needed more support.
• Provide meaningful choice. Having a ton of different sessions doesn’t mean much if you tell people where to go every second of the day. Treat your teachers like the professionals they are and let them determine the best course of learning for the day. Will some people take advantage of voting with their feet to skip out? Quite possibly. Those people have chosen to act unprofessionally and should be scorned, but you shouldn’t let the small number who would do such a thing determine the way you’re going to treat the vast majority of people who will do what they need to because they actually want to become better teachers.
• Create chances for cross-communication. One of my favorite things about Edcamp is getting to meet people who come from lots of different schools. Unfortunately, most districts seem to treat their PD offerings Ghostbusters style. Don’t cross the streams! Work with neighboring schools or districts to tap into an even wider range of knowledge, skills, and interests.

Let’s face it, while the building of the schedule in the morning may be the most magical part of a day at Edcamp, it’s not the one single thing that makes it truly awesome. The awesome part is building connections across disciplines, districts, and interests to create an ad hoc community of caring that values each others’ learning and the learning process.

If you don’t think you can work on building that in your school, I offer very reasonable rates to be your expert for a day.*

*That  was a joke.

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