“Good morning educators! We’re going to be moving a lot today—you’re welcome and I’m sorry.”
As staff developers who support teachers K-12, we know that the promise of regular movement will elicit a range of reactions from our workshop participants. We honor the groans because we know that, by the end of the session, we will have multiple teachers commenting on how much they learned and how quickly the time went by.
A popular sentiment floating around social media in recent years is that teachers want no part in professional development that requires them to engage in activities as if they’re the children that they teach. Icebreakers in particular are almost universally loathed in these viral moments.
Teachers are not children—this is absolutely the truth. Teachers attending professional development are, however, learners. Being a student has nothing to do with age, and if teaching is our craft, then being in the authentic position of the learner is essential to revisit regularly.
How, then, can professional development honor educators as professionals, model effective teaching practices, and support meaningful growth without feeling patronizing? In our view, three components are essential:
- The explicit modeling of best practice in an authentic classroom environment
- Ongoing guided reflection
- Sustained, differentiated, teacher-led support in the form of follow-up coaching
In the posts that follow, we’ll dig into each of these components—what they look like in practice, why they work, and how together they transform professional development from something done to teachers into something that genuinely strengthens their craft.
We just announced our newest PD opportunity, Plan, Align, Collaborate: A Multi-District Workshop for Co-Teachers ,open to co-teachers across Long Island, NYC, and the Tri-State Area. Co-teachers will have time to plan and leave ready to implement new strategies. Give your co-teachers a head start on the 2026-27 school year!
