Professional Learning

I have been thinking about what professional learning is for a few weeks now. If I were asked this a year ago I would have had a quick answer. It is learning related to my profession. However, now my ideas have changed some.

Professional learning in the field of education is learning about how to be a better teacher. To be a better teacher I need to learn about learning.  Then wouldn’t going through the process of learning improve my teaching? I keep thinking back to a time I had to change the starter in my car which was stuck in our garage. I remember searching online and researching for hours trying to find out how to do this. After spending most of a day I had accomplished the task and fixed the car. This whole process of doing a household chore taught me a lot about learning and failure. It took a lot of failure and retrying to figure out how to get the job done. So was this day a day of professional learning? I think so.

In addition, I know that learning and engagement are strongly related. Also we are most engaged when we have choice, autonomy, and purpose. Too often in our field the autonomy and even the choice is taken out of professional learning. In a field where the purpose is so obvious and important we should do a better job of providing educators with autonomy and choice in their professional learning.

My thoughts are that true professional learning is something done on your own choice with your own time. However, schools need to do a better job of providing educators with more time to pursue this learning. There are many days I find myself too tired and run down after what seems like endless scheduled meetings or things that must be done to complete my own learning. I wish as a teacher I could get some 20% time each week to work on whatever I wanted related to my profession. That would allow my teaching skills to really take off.

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