What's the Story Behind the Story?
Honestly, as a music teacher it is extremely rare when I receive content related professional development. As a matter of fact, this is a common problem for most music educators. We have been forced to attend trainings, meetings, and professional development that quite frankly have nothing to do with us! It’s very aggravating and a waste of time. Imagine sitting through a training and having to literally adjust the presentation in your head to make it applicable to your situation. As a professional teacher, I get excited when I learn something that I can apply in my classroom or my professional life even if it is not musical, but way too often are music teachers sitting in the back listening to general content wondering if the Principal will let them go work in their classroom. Being the single music educator on campus doesn’t work well for support either. Texas Music Educators Association is the most resourceful professional development available to music teachers in the south. I now realize that it has been so successful over the years because it addresses the 5 key principles of effective professional development.
Why: The status quo of professional learning across the board is ineffective because most times it is dull and or irrelevant. In some cases, there are good informative sessions with no follow up trainings. No matter what subject teachers teach, they all dread professional development for these very reasons. I have observed that having other teachers that teach your same grade or same subject is very helpful when it comes to implementing newly learned methods in your classroom. A 5th Grade math teacher has the entire 5th grade team which includes other math teachers, as well as the math teachers from every other grade to support them. Music educators are at a disadvantage when it comes to professional development for three reasons.
1. Being the only teacher of a subject lacks in-house support for content related matters.
2. Professional developments may provide general information, but not content related information.
3. TMEA is the best music professional development available to most music educators but is sometimes frowned upon by districts because of the cost and travel requirements.
What: I created a presentation breaking explaining why TMEA is the model for effective music professional development. TMEA successfully executes duration, support, engagement, modeling, and discipline specific content. When I present this information, I will use the success of TMEA to explain the type of professional development music educators should begin experiencing on a consistent basis.
How: Initially I considered building my points using Microsoft Sway for its user-friendly templates and clean presentation. Then I started thinking of the best way possible to share a presentation as well as a recording of me presenting the information. I ended up using Google Slides to create a slide show and Loom to screen record it. I decided to provide my audience with the choice of going through the slide show and reviewing the information themselves, or to watch a video of me presenting the slide show to get more context on the information.
Slide Show
References
Andrews, T. M., Leonard, M. J., Colgrove, C. A., & Kalinowski, S. T. (2011). Active Learning Not Associated with Student Learning in a Random Sample of College Biology Courses. CBE Life Sciences Education, 10(4), 394–405. http://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.11-07-0061
Five Simple Rules for Creating World Changing Presentations. (2009, December 16). [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hT9GGmundag&feature=youtu.be
Goodwin, B. (2015). Research Says/Does Teacher Collaboration Promote Teacher Growth? Educational Leadership, 73(4), 82–83. Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/dec15/vol73/num04/Does-Teacher-Collaboration-Promote-Teacher-Growth%C2%A2.aspx
Gulamhussein, A. (2013). Teaching the Teachers Effective Professional Development in an Era of High Stakes Accountability. Center for Public Education. Retrieved from http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/system/files/2013-176_ProfessionalDevelopment.pdfz
TEDxEast - Nancy Duarte uncovers common structure of greatest communicators 11/11/2010. (2010, December 10). [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nYFpuc2Umk
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