Plea to Differentiate PD

Background:
Washington State just adopted a new teacher evaluation program (TPEP) and my district is working on how to implement it on the ground level.  After sitting through a "steering committee" meeting I wrote an email in responding to a comment my assistant superintendent made.  I believe that you could change the names and it could represent any school district in this state.

Dear Assistant Superintendent,

During yesterday’s TPEP meeting I asked about offering different opportunities for teachers.  Your response was that you would need to go back to the building level administrators and talk with them because having each teacher doing a different PD might be a workload issue for administrators [paraphrased].  I’d like to respond to this:

 

The accountability movement has shifted our focus, as teachers, away from covering material and towards student understanding.  I believe this shift is essential to improving education.  Teachers truly have to want each student to know and understand.  As teachers we have accepted the challenge to meet the needs of individual students (differentiate) in order to ensure their success.  I would argue there is no teacher in our District that has “figured out differentiation” because it is a mindset and will need continual adaptations to meet the changing needs of students.  This shift in mindset will continue to increase the workload of professional teachers.   As a profession we have taken on this burden of differentiation in the pursuit of improving education.

 Differentiation requires work, planning, and follow through.  The end result is a culture where the individual is valued.  The TPEP framework are the standards for teachers and provide their learning targets.  How a teacher gets to these learning targets is not important.  I believe we need to accept the challenge of differentiation as a district and model best practices.

What are your thoughts?  Have you already had this discussion in your district?  What was the results?  Are there any districts meeting the individual needs of teacher?

 

Mike Stratton