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| I'm hoping my PD cohort looks something like this. "TeamWork" by Luigi Mengato (CC BY 2.0) |
After applying for a cohort leadership position, the district admin selected me to lead a cohort about student engagement and classroom management. They challenged me with helping my cohort members learn how to generate a more positive classroom experience while increasing the amount of interest and the quality of learning for our students.
Easier said than done!
I first thought of the book Teach Like a Pirate. Dave Burgess and his crew specialize in student engagement, and the book and Twitter chats (#TLAP) have given me a wealth of ideas about creating a more exciting and welcoming classroom for my students. So I knew I wanted to help spread the PIRATE culture to my mates.
I also looked to other Dave Burgess Consulting, Inc. publications like Learn Like a Pirate, Explore Like a Pirate, Play Like a Pirate, and Ditch That Textbook for ideas to share with my cohort members. These books are must haves for any teacher's professional library, and I found excellent points to discuss at our first meeting.
After one meeting (on a day before the school year began) and on the eve of our second meeting, I can decisively say that I have learned more from planning these meetings than I have learned from all the PD I've attended in the past five years. I hope my cohort members can say the same.
In our next meeting, I plan to enable group discussions about what we want to do and what we need to do to increase student engagement in our classroom. I want teachers to share what is working for them and what they want to improve. I want to let them know that our classrooms should be safe spaces for everyone and that we need to take ourselves and our content less seriously every once in a while and let our kids be kids.
As I finish my planning for our next meeting, the final person I want to introduce my cohorts to is Ron Clark, the founder of the Ron Clark Academy. Having had the pleasure of hearing Ron speak earlier this year, I must say that I really want to be a student in his school. I'm guessing I'm not the only person who has said that. His energy and passion for education and above all his kids makes me want to be a better teacher.
I'm hoping his example rubs off on my cohorts and leads them back to their classrooms with an increased desire to do even more to engage their students in a meaningful educational experience.
