Although this was one of the shortest chapters in this book, I believe that it is one of the most relevant for education reform. The most thought-provoking statement that I read was “professional development provided the teachers at Union City [New Jersey] was a process, not an event…” I feel like most of my professional development has been just that, an event, because I never used any of the materials I got, and there was no follow-up to see if individuals who attended the PD trainings made improvements in their teaching. I attended a training on Access, but I don’t use it; I use Excel instead.

Yet, there have been events that I have attended which have been meaningful and changed my teaching approach and helped me grow into a better teacher. One is the Math Leadership Support Network sponsored by PIMSER and the University of Kentucky. The purpose of this program is to provide materials and leadership training for teachers and administrators to take back to their district and distribute the information and improve schools from within. Since I began attending the meetings in August (they occur about once a month), I have a huge binder full of activities, informational reading, and have acquired eight books, including Vandewalle. The 5-8 activities work well with my high school kids. Their focus for learning is to teach students conceptually. Because they model the activities with us, I finally have a good understanding of how to design and teach good conceptual lessons. I will be adding them to my wiki from last semester sometime during this week (I am officially on spring break). They will be under the heading of Activities That Work. The address for my wiki is:

http://pamcallahan.wikispaces.com

A second PD that was successful and was more a process than an event is one that I have already blogged about (the successful high schools at work). I recently received a mailing from them of a technical math test with some really good questions. If anyone would like a pdf copy of this test, just reply to this post, and I will get them to you via email, and I will post it to the wiki, too.