Does the following checklist look, or sound, familiar to you? Pedagogical focus for the following school year is agreed upon Professional Development dates are confirmed on the calendar The amazing workshop leader or consultant is booked Teachers implement what they learned on the PD day(s) in their classrooms to enhance student learning How often do you check ALL of the boxes? Which box is typically the most important? Which box is the one typically left unchecked? Why? And more importantly, how can we improve in this area? My guess is that most of us, if not all of us, agree that the final box for the questions above proves to be the most challenging. But why? The bottom line is that without the chance to continue learning about the topic and actively using the tools/strategies delivered during the PD sessions, people simply revert back to what they have in the existing toolbox because they haven’t truly experienced deep learning of the content presented. So, how can we provide for ...

I like to talk to people about what systems, structures, and platforms they use to help their teams collaborate, learn, and problem-solve.  It doesn't really matter if I'm talking with trainers, consultants, or educators. I usually hear something like this: "We have our (training) courses inside of  ( INSERT NAME OF LMS HERE) . And, then we collaborate every week on  ( INSERT ZOOM, SLACK, GOOGLE MEET, ETC) " When did we start thinking / saying this?  Was this a prevalent phrase pre-pandemic? I don't remember hearing it then. (Perhaps I wasn't listening.) It's certainly a common paradigm now. More importantly, what impact does its arrival have on the way we structure our team's environments? For starters, it brings up a few odd questions. Aren't we naturally better learners when we collaborate? Aren't we better collaborators when we're learning along the way? Don't we do one better when we incorporate the other? When we think of the syst...