Administrators are especially busy these days. Not only are they finishing their evaluations, interviewing for open positions, and managing wild end-of-the-year shenanigans perpetrated by students (and teachers), but they are also beginning to plan professional development for next year. Make their lives easier by telling them about House Bill 1345, which Governor Inslee signed into law on March 31st and which will go into effect on June 9th, 2016.
Teachers played a large role in the creation and passage of the bill, which you can read about here. The bill provides a statewide definition of "professional learning,"
“. . . a comprehensive, sustained, job-embedded, and collaborative approach to improving teachers’ and principals’ effectiveness in raising student achievement.
[. . .] Professional learning is an ongoing process that is measurable by multiple indicators and includes learning experiences that support the acquisition and transfer of learning, knowledge, and skills into the classroom and daily practice.
[. . .] Professional learning shall incorporate differentiated, coherent, sustained, and evidence-based strategies that improve educator effectiveness and student achievement, including job-embedded coaching or other forms of assistance to support educators’ transfer of new knowledge and skills into their practice.”
In other words, districts should take the money they may have been spending on consultants who give one-day training sessions and instead, invest it in relevant, ongoing, differentiated, collaborative training strategies.
