Back-to-School PD Edition
It's time to set the tone, roll out the things, and launch a successful year.
If you spend time on Instagram or TikTok, you know that back-to-school PD is the ultimate punchline. Teachers hate it, and there’s good reason to. Frankly, back-to-school PD often sucks, and teachers have a million things to do before children arrive. If you steal a teacher’s time, you better make it count.
In this issue:
Why Back-To-School PD?
Key Elements of Effective Design
Design Sequence
General Tips
Sample Agendas and Topics
What Happens Next?
Why Back-to-School PD?
1. Reflection and Planning
Think of PD as the ultimate reset button. It’s a chance to reflect on what worked, what didn’t, and how to improve this year. Reflecting on past experiences and planning thoughtfully can turn past mistakes into future successes.
What plans do you need the WHOLE STAFF to be in on?
What data is important to put in front of staff?
2. Skill Enhancement
Education, like fashion, is ever-evolving. You can't rely on outdated teaching methods, just as you wouldn’t wear last season’s trends. PD, grounded in data and evidence, equips you with the latest skills and strategies to keep your teaching fresh and effective for your specific group of students.
What do staff need to practice?
What narrow instructional strategies are important for success at this school?
3. Addressing Challenges:
The classroom can sometimes feel like an obstacle course. PD prepares you to navigate the hurdles—supporting students’ emotional health, adopting new curricular resources in its next implementation phase, or adapting to new educational norms.
What was a sticking point for us?
How do we prevent those issues this year?
How will that problem be addressed? How will we know we are successful?
4. Alignment with Goals:
Effective PD aligns teaching with school and district goals, creating a unified approach that ensures everyone pulls in the same direction. Alignment yields collective efficacy.
What goals must be made clear? How will staff internalize them?
What specific actions will drive progress toward these goals?
5. Collaboration and Sharing:
Teaching can be an isolating profession. Research on teacher retention shows that relationships matter. PD provides opportunities to collaborate, share best practices, and learn from colleagues, fostering a sense of community and support.
How do we build a collective team working towards this mission?
How will staff voice and choice be integrated?
Key Elements of Effective Design
Here’s a design shortcut: What will they practice?
We previously learned that practice is critical for effective one-on-one coaching. The same is true for group learning.
Andragogy, a term popularized by Malcolm Knowles, refers to the methods and principles used in adult education. Andragogy facilitates self-directed, relevant, and experience-based learning that aligns with adult learners' unique motivations and practical needs.
A. Align with Goals
Start with the end in mind. Ensure the PD aligns with school-wide goals and teachers' specific needs. Define what success looks like and how it will be measured.
B. Active Learning and Practice
Using a 5E lesson structure, design learning that leverages interactive activities like discussions, hands-on practice, and collaborative work. Make the heavy lifting more on participants by having them analyze exemplars first, then explain them, and then practice them.
C. Feedback and Reflection
Provide constructive feedback. Offer specific, actionable feedback that helps teachers improve. Build in time for teachers to reflect on their learning and how it applies to their practice.
Design Sequence
The design sequence leverages andragocial principles and ensures that participants walk away with some knowledge and skills to apply the practice to some degree. If this sounds incredibly vague, it does. The beauty of this type of learning is that there are natural places for differentiation based on simple framing techniques.
In other words, with appropriate framing, questioning, and prompting, participants can engage in same activities but differentiate the type and depth of learning.
Design Sequence in Action: Bellwork Routine
Let’s imagine we are doing a session on the bellwork routine (also known as “do now,” catalyst, First Five, or any other number of names).
1. Show or analyze exemplar
We are going to watch a video. As we are watching, consider this question: What makes an effective bellwork routine? How does a bellwork routine align to the school-wide goals we just reviewed?
Great. Now, take 1 minute to jot down your reflections to our two guiding questions. What makes an effective bellwork routine? How does this routine align with our goals?
Give silent work time.
Now, turn and talk to your table and break it down. What made this effective and why is this aligned to our school-wide goals?
Listen for:
Expectations were clear from the beginning
She “controlled the flow” as students entered
There was a clear place for students to write; seemed routined.
Timer was set and reinforced.
Attendance was taken.
She moved around the room to monitor student completion of work.
The students were practicing content, as opposed to a fun prompt or journal.
Routine for completing and reviewing the “do now.”
It will reduce tardies and early class disruptions and keep focus on academic learning.
Let’s bring it the whole group. Ms. Howard, start us off. What made this an effective bellwork routine?
Someone build off of that.
2. Name the key points or key elements
You guys are absolutely right. We know that this bellwork routine is essential because it helps bring a lot of consistency and safety to our school. That leads us right into our core idea. Let’s read it all together on the count of 3.
An effective bellwork routine includes these elements.
Note: At this point, you are clarifying the expectations. What do you want to see from everyone when it comes to the specific practice?
3. Give time to plan
Now, let’s take some time to plan your bellwork routine. If this is your first time, consider some logistical elements first. If you have been doing bellwork for some time, what can you do this year to strengthen this procedure based on what we just analyzed? You have 5 minutes to prepare to practice. You have a place to script in your note catcher.
4. Practice and give feedback (to mastery)
We will break into groups of 5 and head out into the hallway for 30 minutes of practice, where you will complete a minimum of two rounds each - but you will keep practicing until time is called. We will rotate teachers serving as the teachers. Before we do, let’s review a quick feedback cheat sheet so you can give the highest quality feedback. Remember our norms and our collective commitment to each other’s growth.
Let’s pause and let me highlight some group trends. I noticed that we have a lot of strength in our trusting relationship areas. I saw Mr. Johnson even use clever ways to greet his students. I want to push us to focus on some of the redirection areas in this next practice round. Everyone, please look at those indicators again and really push each other to get those areas down.
Okay, keep practicing. I will be around.
Shout out to my friend Tera Carr who can lead this like a boss.
5. Reflect
Now, I want you to go back to the feedback cheat sheet and highlight the feedback that you received and star anything that you want to continue to work on in your practice. Share with a partner.
General Tips
Classroom work time. Classroom work time is NOT professional development. Make no mistake. However, as education consultant Jen Manly says, “Professional development time without implementation time is a waste of time.” Do the session, and then give time to teachers to process and practice.
Narrow practice to things that you will actually follow up on. If you say that you will check lesson plans every Monday, know that all teachers don’t believe you. See more on this below.
Specify the correct messenger. Consider who else should be delivering certain messages besides you.
Consider all of the people and provide alternative activities. Special education, special areas, support staff, and more.
Don’t make icebreakers painful. Regardless of what you plan, half the people hate them. Make them productive and quick. In fact, Zander Epps in collaboration with Bored Teachers suggest just one.
Consider the pace of the day. Build in plenty of breaks. Those breaks are the real icebreakers, not what was on the agenda. Use these breaks strategically. Breaks are when leaders need to be most on. Work the room.
Use data to build your case for change, not beat people with it. If you have something on your data that says “data,” consider integrating data throughout the PD time so that they see the direct connection between the activity/practice and the resulting data point. Remember, the truth must dazzle gradually or the world will go blind.
Consider how to integrate the teacher evaluation tool or handbooks. Don’t go line-by-line through any written document. Check out this article I wrote for Edutopia.org on integrating evaluations.
Information-heavy content should be process-heavy content. Rather than presenting 25 slides on procedures and policies, consider giving the staff the slides and asking guiding questions. Alternatively, assign subject-matter experts and do a rotation.
Check out this document, which includes common challenges and a checklist for support and guidance.
“[Professional development] is an opportunity for leaders and teachers to work as a collective as opposed to what really happens, which is two different groups sharing a space together.” - Peter DeWitt and Michael Nelson
Sample Agendas and Topics
Just like coaching, leaders must be super narrow in their planning. Rather than having a “classroom management” section, consider options such as “least invasive corrections.” This requires prioritizing skills. You may have seen a list of narrow PD suggestions in the Science of Reading Edition. Similarly, I have created a list of narrow PD considerations and sample agendas.
What happens after PD?
To apply the key learning from Joyce and Showers (2002), leaders must follow up with feedback and coaching for implementation to be successful. However, successful implementation does not happen by accident. While it can’t guarantee success, planning for implementation in advance can help hold leaders accountable for their critical work.
Get narrow. Everything you present and practice in professional development means more work for everyone, including you.
Here are four things that leaders can prepare in advance (all of these are live links to use for the bellwork example I highlighted in the design sequence section).
Feedback Templates
Feedback templates are the ultimate time-saver during execution time. We know that nothing is perfect the first time something is rolled out. Individual differences, styles, experiences, and mindsets enable someone to meet the expectations as outlined. Some people just need little nudges, reminders, or moments of accountability to make practices stick.
Action Step Banks
Action steps drive coaching. Preparing an action step bank in advance can help you stay focused on school-wide initiatives, ensure efficiency in classroom analysis, and speed up the conversation preparation. Use the feedback cheat sheet you prepared for the session to drive this bank.
Pre-Planned Coaching Conversations
Prepare the most common coaching conversations you anticipate in the implementation phase. For example, here’s one on assigning the do now or bellwork. Go back and check out some of the action steps of the week and see if they can be useful in executing your professional learning plan.
Teacher Self-Reflection/Survey Tools
Sometimes, following up with everyone on everything can be challenging. Consider leveraging self-reflection tools to engage with staff virtually. For example, “Staff, now that we have done the bellwork routine for 4 weeks, please take 10 minutes to complete this self-reflection and send me one thing you are going to work on to strengthen this routine.”
Conclusion
Back-to-school PD is a school leader’s Super Bowl. After months of data analysis, hiring, planning, and vision-setting, it’s go-time. The importance of this initial professional development cannot be overstated—it sets the tone for the entire school year. Done well, it can inspire, align, and equip teachers with the tools they need to succeed. Done poorly, it can demoralize and disengage. As you prepare for this crucial time, remember that your efforts to create meaningful, practical, and engaging PD sessions are an investment in the future success of your school. Make every moment count, and set the stage for a year of growth and achievement.
Gentle readers: What did I miss? Comment below and share some insights with one another. Iron sharpens iron.