Historically, professional development for teachers often centered around efforts such as periodic in-person workshops, in-class observation, and single-sessions workshops. But these traditional models pose several challenges. Schools would often struggle to provide consistent, quality instruction to scale. In addition, since these types of development initiatives relied on in-person learning, it could be tricky finding a workshop schedule that worked for all teachers district-wide or to provide enough repetition and ongoing education to make new skills stick. A one-size-fits-all workshop given to the entire faculty was also not ideal as it didn’t allow teachers to work on individual skills they needed for self-improvement.
While traditional professional development workshops were almost always done in person, the trend in recent years have pivoted to technology in an effort to provide teachers with more personalized professional development where and when they need it most–through remote learning.
Workshops that operate in a new, on-demand environment can be tailored to an Educator’s specific goals, on their own schedule, with quality of instruction assured.
District-Wide Remote Workshops to Meet Any Situation
Professional development workshops that are customized to a specific school district or even an individual teacher’s needs help address differences in skill-sets and give Educators the resources they need so their students can achieve the best academic outcomes possible. Districts can even engage instructional coaches to improve the effectiveness of their teachers.
Schools benefit from having progressive, quality instruction that they are able to track to meet school-wide objectives. “This was a well-constructed workshop,” says Amelia Charles, a certified Life Science education teacher in Arkansas, who recently completed an online, PD workshop from Clerisy. “I learned more from this because of the pace of presentation, varied presentation medium (talking, videos, text), and reflection time than I have learned from any other online education presentation.”
Best Practices Shared Across the World
Even though many of us still feel trapped at home, the recent pandemic has actually opened us up to more long-distance communication. People across all industries are spreading out and moving around the country now that jobs are no longer tied to a specific building. Educators are capitalizing on the trend of long-distance communication by sharing best practices with each other across the globe.
We learned from our peers in Europe how they managed their classrooms weeks and months before the virus came to our part of the world. Even within the states, teachers across the country were sharing the best way to conduct an online classroom and ideas for when students are back in the school building.
An online professional development platform can serve as a central hub where those best practices can easily be made available to teachers around the world, allowing them to learn from their peers thus creating an ecosystem of certified Educators sharing and learning.
Online Professional Development – Anywhere, Anytime
One of the most appealing aspects of online workshops is the fact that Educators can control their own professional development by earning PD hours to satisfy mandatory teacher licensure requirements whenever and wherever they want. Providing this level of support fosters their own professional growth while also granting them entrepreneurial and leadership opportunities they may not otherwise receive.
Additionally, school districts can host training initiatives and workshops tailored specifically to the challenges their Educators are facing within their school community all through one online platform. Educators can access these learnings on-demand to ensure they get the support they need when they need it. The ability to tailor learnings on both the district and individual level creates a truly versatile form of professional development–a complete revamp on antiquated methods that are behind the times.
How Clerisy Can Help
The world of education is currently in the midst of an evolution, and in order for districts and teachers to keep up schools will need to undergo a digital transformation by implementing technology-based solutions that are not only part of everyday functionalities, but also part of their contingency planning.
Clerisy, powered by iTutor, provides schools, administrators, and Educators the tools needed to create a robust professional development curriculum through an online platform to address the dynamics of our ever-changing educational environment. Whether it’s in the classroom, online, or blended learning, Clerisy’s PD is consistent, research-based, district-wide education for teachers, along with the tools and resources to make a true instructional impact on their students.
Bonnie Franz, a dual-certified English and Special Education Teacher from New York, said the mini-lesson professional development course she watched “was one of the best, if not the best, [professional development courses]” she’d experienced in more than 25 years of teaching, calling it both entertaining and informative.
If you’d like to learn more about our on-demand professional development offerings, please visit Clerisypd.com.