5 Foolproof Professional Development Tips for the Educational Offseason

You hear the quote all the time from athletes around the world, “Champions are made in the offseason.”  For athletes, the offseason (or preseason) is when they get stronger, smarter, and better.  During the season itself, there usually isn’t enough time to put the required amount of work into the areas mentioned above.  They are simply too busy competing in games and matches.  While athletes practice and compete during their respective seasons, the offseason has always been known as the time where the expectations are to work and learn to prepare for the upcoming season.

If you think about it, the offseason for educators is the same as athletes.  While we may call it summer break and use a portion of the summer to relax and recharge, we also have an obligation to use it as a time to get stronger, smarter and better in our field.  With the help of social media, connected educators continue to grow during the school year.  But the summer is definitely a time when we don’t have so many things going on and can really focus on growing and getting better.

Follow the five tips below to have a strong offseason and help you improve as an educator:

 1. Create a Plan for What You Want to Accomplish this Offseason

We are all well aware of the research that states you have a better chance of accomplishing a goal when it is written down.  Be creative and plan a method of attack for your offseason.  Write it down.  What do you want to accomplish?  What do you want to learn more about?  Where do you want to get better?  Create a plan based on goals and efficiency.  Figure out what you need to do to get better and expand your learning.  If you want to read a certain number of books, then write it down which books you want to read and read them.  If you want to attend certain conferences, then plan for it. 

2. Focus on the “3 R’s”

These aren’t your traditional 3 R’s.  I’m talking about read, read and read.  Plan to read as many books as you want.  Learn how to use Flipboard and create magazines you can read each day to learn more about your passion.  Share what you are reading with others.  Use social media to share your thoughts about your readings.  Or share posts and articles you read via email with your colleagues.  When you read, visualize how you can use what you are reading to help your classroom and/or building.  Dedicate a portion of each day during your offseason to reading.  Last year I read The 5 Choices: The Path to Extraordinary Productivity by Kory Kogon to help improve my productivity during each day.  This summer I have already read The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John Maxwell, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable by Seth Godin, and Leadership and the Art of Struggle by Steven Snyder. 

3. Go to Conferences and EdCamps

Try to go to every conference and edcamp that you can.  The professional networking and opportunities to get better are limitless.  Whether the conferences are national or local, it doesn’t make a difference. They are opportunities to grow. 

My favorite form of professional development is participating in a couple of edcamps during the summer.  For example, this year I plan on participating in the international #EdCampLdr day on June 30^th where there will be edcamps around the world focusing on leadership (Ohio’s#EdCampLdrOH will be at Clark Hall in Gahanna, OH once again!).  Take advantage of the opportunity to attend edcamps to learn from others in a nontraditional academic setting that will enable you to personalize your own professional learning.

4. Try Something New

At times, during the school year, we tend to backoff from trying new things because there is always a learning curve that takes time.  Find a new site to explore.  Work with some different apps to see if they can help you grow.  Look into different social media accounts to see if they can help your professionally (Hint: Facebook isn’t what it used to be.  Many people are now using it to grow professionally).  Try using Voxer to connect with others around the world to see what they are doing to grow this offseason.

5. Make Goals for the Upcoming School Year

Use the offseason to create goals for your classroom and/or building.  If you already have goals for next year, figure out an action plan for how you will accomplish your goals.  Think of the different evidence you will collect to accomplish your goals.  The offseason is the time to pinpoint which data you will collect during the year and how you will use it.  Don’t forget to focus on what you want to improve for the upcoming school year and research what you can use to make that happen. 

While I am definitely a beach guy and love to hit the sand and surf during the summer, I also know my offseason is here.  Its time to get better at what I do.  Learn more, grow more, and help my school and district get better.  Professional growth is always available.  As educators, we have to want to get better.  We have to want to be the best we can be for our students.  What better time to do that than the offseason.  Remember, all men are created equal, some just work harder in the preseason.

What Everyone Needs to Know About Innovation

Have you ever wondered why educators are reluctant to make changes?  Whether it is changing instructional methods, changing educational mindsets, or changing what our classrooms look like each day, many educators stick to the same formula and don’t let go.  This mindset is ironic because we live in a world that is completely the opposite.  We live in a society where change occurs daily.  Yet as educators, we stick to what we are comfortable with everyday and avoid change. 

In my session “What Everyone Needs to Know About Innovation” at the 2016 Battelle for KidsConnect for Success Conference at the Ohio Union, we are going to change.  We will examine innovative educational practices and programs and break down how they originated and became successful.  Attendees will learn that creativity isn’t something that people are born with or inherit.  Creativity is a mindset that can change lives by building self-confidence and following certain protocols to create change. 

There are many resources available to help anyone become innovative.  We will examine resources such as George Couros’s (@gcouros) book TheInnovator’s Mindset: Empower Learning, Unleash Talent and Lead a Culture ofCreativity and The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley to learn more about how to be creative and innovative and how easy creativity will come to you. 

Everyone wants to be great at what they do.  It all starts with confidence and a desire to be great.  Developing that confidence will fuel your creativity.  Using creativity to find ways to offer innovative instructional practices, programs, and mindsets in classrooms and buildings will get everyone a step closer to being a great educator.

Sometime before you attend my session “What Everyone Needs to Know About Innovation” on June 13^th, watch the video below and ask yourself, “What can I do differently to be a change agent and help people?” 

How To Tell If You Love What You Do

Anyone who is a connected educator knows, once you get started using different resources and tools to stay connected, it can be hard to stop.  Participating in Twitter chats, Voxer groups, utilizing Facebook and Instagram to connect, blogging, reading blog posts and education articles, attending conferences and attending EdCamps to name a few, all take time.  But like anything else in life, when we want to be good at something, we need to get involved, practice and devote the required amount of time necessary to be successful. 

When you invest the time, focus, passion and energy to be successful, you demonstrate to yourself and others what you value.  When I first became an administrator and began to invest time in learning more from others so I could improve, I can honestly say it became addicting.  I continue to spend hours upon hours investing my time in chats, reading blog posts, asking questions, and connecting with educators from around the world.

While my time management isn’t the best and the balance between my growth and personal life constantly needs adjusted, the people closest to me identify why I do what I do.  They see my passion and love for what I do.  They can see what I want to help my students and staff become.  Its not a question of whether I love what I do everyday.  For the people closest to me, the question is, “How can I love what I do?” or my kids say, “Whatever I do in my life, I want to love it as much as Dad loves what he does.”

As an educator, do you love what you do?  Your answers to the questions below may help determine if you do:

Is getting better a priority for you?

Do you want to get better?  Do you feel a need to get better?  If you love what you do, you make getting better a priority in your life.  In education, we not only want to get better for ourselves, we look to get better so others can be great.  We make getting better a priority in our lives because we love what we do.

Do you invest time to get better?

If you want to get better, as stated above, you have to put the time in.  If you love to workout, you find time to workout.  You plan for it each day.  You make the time.  If you want to be a better educator or a better leader, you need to invest the time to get better.

Are you consistently investing the time to get better?

If you love something, you consistently invest time to improve.  You don’t do it once and then wonder why you didn’t get better.  When I was younger, I used to be a pretty good golfer.  I practice and played everyday.  When I occasionally play now, I know I am not that player anymore.  Why should I expect to be?  I don’t consistently invest the time to be good.  If you love what you do, consistently invest time to grow as an educator.

Does getting better drive you in your craft?

People who love what they do are passionate about their craft.  People who love what they do have an enormous sense of pride about getting better and being the best.  People who love what they do know “why” they want to get better.  As Eric Thomas says, You need to have a “why” to love what you do.  Your “why” will drive your passion and pride.  When you have that drive and others see that drive, everyone knows you love what you do.  It’s not an act.  It’s genuine.

Do you enjoy helping others? Does it excite you?

When you love what you do, you know helping others get better only makes your field stronger.  In education, when we help students and staff, it makes culture of education in our buildings, districts, and learning network stronger.   When you love what you do, you give back to others.  At that point, people who love what they do realize it is not about them, it’s about others.

Do you reach out to others to get better?

People who love what they do have no problem asking others for help.  They know others can help them grow.  Successful people build a network to get better.  None of us can be the best in anything without help from others.  When you love what you do, you make it a point on a daily basis to let others help you grow.

Are you giving your craft everything you have to offer?

Loving what you do means you bring everything to the table each day.  As educators, it doesn’t matter what your job description or position is.  Our students, parents, and communities deserve our absolute best each day.  

Are you willing to change and encourage others to change when necessary?

You always here the line, “Change is scary,” or “People fear change.”  When you love what you do, you don’t fear change, but look forward to it.  When you love what you do, you invest the time to change and innovate to improve yourself and others.  When you love what you do, you realize change is a part of the process towards overall success.  You model change so others the people around you will change for the better.  When you love what you do, you help improve the culture by your willingness to change and visualize the benefits of doing it differently than before.

If we are going to make a difference in the education field, we need to love what we do.  I find it hard to believe that when people get into an amazing field like education, they don’t have some type of love or passion for the field and want to help students.  If you read these questions and don’t believe you love what you do, you have two choices: You can look to do something else with your life or you can find your “why” and invest the time to begin to love what you do again.  If you choose option one, don’t feel ashamed.  Go find your passion and what drives you.  If you choose the second option, as a fellow educator, I need you start today.  Please invest the time to get better and make it a priority to love what you do.  Not only do you owe it to yourself, but also you owe to all of the students’ lives you touch each day. 

What questions do you think people need to ask to know if they love what they do?

Ultimate Guide: Best Instructional Practices for Student Growth

If teaching were easy, everybody would do it.  OK, maybe not, but there would be a lot more teachers who stay in the education field and not leave after a short time.  In fact, there is new federal data that says 17 percent of new public school teachers leave their jobs after four years.  As I read this, it forces me to wonder, how many of these teachers were employing the best instructional practices during their time in the classroom?  Were they using practices that made their time in the classroom a more enjoyable experience?  These two questions can determine if a teacher is going to be successful or not.

Let’s take a look at some of the best instructional practices to use that will help teachers and students.  While many of these practices are based on John Hattie’s work Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning, there are some fundamental methods that should be used daily in every classroom.

Learning Targets That Come to Life

Create learning targets that mean something instead of just posting learning targets.  As my friend and peer Mike Acomb would say, “Make your learning targets come to life for the kids!”  Learning targets need to be addressed during a lesson and embedded in the lesson.  Students shouldn’t have to memorize learning targets.  They learn the targets through the lesson itself.  Let your targets act like a GPS for your students to guide them in the right direction.

Student-Led Learning

Empower your students.  Let them lead their learning.  Teachers need to facilitate class, not teach class.  There will be struggles in the beginning as students and parents aren’t always comfortable with this type of learning environment (remember, we didn’t learn this way in school either).  Continue the journey.  Our students deserve it.  We are all lifelong learners.  Let’s teach our students at the earliest age possible the benefits of exploration, research, collaboration, and hard work.

Feedback

Our students need to know where they stand on a daily basis.  “Excellent”, “Great job!”,  “88%”, or 8/10 are not examples of feedback.  Feedback is information given to a student that fosters growth.  It can’t happen weeks after the assessment or lesson.  It needs to be as instantaneous as possible.  Utilize tools such as Plickers, Nearpod, Google Forms, Padlet, and TodaysMeet to get instant feedback that can be used in school.  Give our students feedback they can use to get better.

Don’t forget about students giving feedback to educators.  Students should be able to give educators feedback on a daily basis to let the teachers and administration know where they stand.  Are we giving our students the most effective learning environment possible?  Let the students tell us.  RemindHQ is a great tool to use to do this.  Educators can allow students to text back using this texting application.

Formative Assessments

Formative assessments are practice.  Plain and simple.

Let students practice before their assessments.  Don’t punish them while they practice.  Let them explore and figure out what they need to know.  Homework and quizzes are practice.  Create a culture of practice in your building and classroom.  Let students prepare without worrying about failing.

Engagement

When it comes to engagement, there is a simple question to ask, “Would you want to be in your class?”  Don’t base your class on what has been done in the past in education; make your classroom something new.  Use different resources to make your class engaging.  Allow students voice and choice.  Make your classroom something your students have never seen before.  You have a better chance of engaging students that way than sticking with traditional teaching practices.

Alternative Assessments

Why do we still assess the same way we always have? Why can’t we allow students to show what they know in different ways?  Great questions without great explanations to support them.  Allow students to try something different.  Your classroom and building culture will improve.  Let’s look at different ways to assess: allow students to make videos, allow them to complete projects, allow them to present, or ask students how they can show what they know.  Taking tests each week doesn’t create lifelong learners, it creates memorizers.

Making Blended Learning Just “Learning”

The term “blended learning” needs to go away.  Blended learning should be a part of learning.  As building leaders and teachers, we need to embed learning in the culture of our school.  We do this by using a wide variety of resources to produce student growth.  We need to professionally develop our students and staff to effectively use the resources each day.  Finally, personalizing your learning environment allows students to use the resources in which they learn the best.

Personalized Learning

As discussed earlier, allow students a voice and choice.  The teacher isn’t always the smartest person in the room in today’s classroom.  Limit the amount of direct instruction and develop new ways to deliver content to students.  Become a learner yourself and find ways to connect, collaborate, build confidence and create to positively affect your teaching. 

Relationships

A positive classroom environment is invaluable.  Positive educator and student relationships outweigh content knowledge.  Content knowledge can always be learned and mastered.  Relationships are built on respect and trust.  Develop great relationships with students and you have foundation for best instructional practices.

Compassion

Our students lead different lives than we did.  Whether that is for the best or not, it is a reality.  As educators, we need to respect that.  We need to identify our students’ live and work with our students.  We aren’t in the business of teaching our students life lessons; we are in the business of educating students for life.  Compassion isn’t a sign of weakness; it is a sign of respect towards our students. 

Using the best instructional practices in school is a lot of work.  If we take the time to become better educators and use the best instructional practices we can, the workload will lessen.  Student will be more productive and maybe, just maybe, more teachers will remain in the business of educating students.  As educators we need to become more knowledgeable in the best instructional practices to make our jobs easier and more rewarding.  Its time for a change, let move our practices from better to best.