I think that providing professional development for teachers is one of the most important and most difficult things to do. From an elementary perspective, we teach all four main subjects along with other things like handwriting and keyboarding. Our curriculum changes about every 7 years (it used to be less than that) so we as elementary teachers had to spend a lot of professional development time learning the new curriculum. Most of the time our professional development classes happen after school when teachers have other things to do. The classes that are provided in my district are wonderful, but it really is a time commitment to take them. In order to have successful professional development a district should provide many choices for their teachers. I also think that week long inservices in the summer are very beneficial because there may not be as many conflicts over the summer months and you can learn a lot with some choice. Districts should also provide time during the year for teachers to get together an share ideas that have been successful for them.
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Time is of the essences. Finding that time for staff development is critical. I agree that time has to be provided for training and it must be provided or supported so that all teachers can participate.
I like your thoughts on week long summer inservices. They sound better than after school during the year, when everyone is easily tired out from the school day. I agree that professional development is important, yet how can we motivate teachers who are not willing to move forward? That is the difficult part, as there are a few teachers in every district that are just not willing to set and achieve new goals. Don't you agree that as an educator...one of our goals is to promote life-long learning through our own actions?!? ;-)
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