How Online Professional Development Changed My Life

Chances are high that you wouldn’t be reading this if it weren’t for online professional development. I don’t mean that in the clichéd “If you can read this thank a teacher” way. What I mean is that I would never, ever have had the connections that led to writing these blog entries if it hadn’t been for the online professional development opportunities that came my way.

People who know me may not believe it, but I kept to myself as a teacher before I found opportunities to connect with other educators online. I read a lot about teaching, but I rarely discussed teaching strategies with others. I had some connections in the department where I taught, and I was a fellow of Writing Project site that no longer exists.

And then I got an email address and found that other college composition teachers were out there discussing what they do in the classroom online. I signed up Megabyte University, an email discussion list that was active from 1990 to 1997. There, I connected with other teachers who were interested in using computers in writing instruction, and I eventually found my voice and began participating—asking questions, sharing strategies, and planning projects. I found that the people who were names on the articles I read in College English and College Composition and Communication were kind, friendly folks who were willing to chat with a relatively inexperienced person like me.

To my conversations on email discussion lists, I added real-time chats on MOOs and IRC. I attended online conferences related to the face-to-face Computers and Writing Conference. Before I knew it, I had connections with colleagues in all corners of the country, and I had actually chatted with CCCC presidents and NCTE Committee Chairs. I even got up the gumption to send a personal email message to Peter Elbow to tell him how much I loved Writing with Power.

Without any reservation, I can say that I ended up writing this blog because of those first connections that I made online in the early 1990s. Online discussion led to new jobs, new teaching opportunities, and new ways to support other teachers using online tools.

None of the resources I tapped when I got started still exist in the same form today. Computer resources have evolved, and we teachers have developed new ways to connect and keep in touch today.

• We can reach out to one another using Facebook and the NCTE Ning.
• You can enroll in the Pathways Professional Development Program and connect with other teachers who are exploring hot-topic issues such as Adolescent Literacy, English Language Learners, and 21st Century Literacies.
• Sign up for one of NCTE’s Web Seminars for a concentrated discussion of a English language arts and college composition topics, like writing online and the connection between speaking and writing.
• Even if you can’t make it to CCCC 2010 in Louisville this week, you can keep track of what’s going on by following the #CCCC10 and #CCCC2010 hashtags on Twitter.
• If you’re a middle or secondary-level teacher, you can sign up for the 2010 NCTE Spring Virtual Conference, which takes place in April and May.

There are many great opportunities. I can’t promise that you’ll find yourself writing the Inbox blog after you participate in these online opportunities, but I can promise that you’ll find wonderful teachers who will share their ideas, listen to your strategies, and, if you’re just lucky, bring you opportunities that will invigorate your teaching every day.

 

It Takes a Community…

I don’t know a teacher who doesn’t want to make a difference in the learning and, yes, even the lives of her students—kind of what we signed up for. But, I also don’t know a one of us that can do that single-handedly. That’s why we gather to learn and collaborate together and that’s where learning communities come in.

Three exemplary learning communities come to my mind.

NCTE’s Pathways Professional Development Program is making a difference for over 1500 participants in 50+ schools and districts across the nation. Pathways participants collaborate in an online platform replete with resources to ask, study, and answer questions about their teaching. These teachers end up learning more about teaching and learning as they use the Pathways resources to reflect on and to change how they work with their students. For example, Michelle Beck, Curriculum Director, Effingham Community Schools, Illinois, notes,

"Pathways ended up being a great tool for us because we were able to tap into resources we would’ve never had access to otherwise. We were able to listen to podcasts and then discuss what we heard and talk about articles that researchers and other teachers had written. These were conversations we had never had before. We had never talked that deeply about our practice and why one thing may work better than another...That generated rich discussion, and that discussion prompted a lot of change within our English Department."

Another teacher community which you’ll see around NCTE is the Assembly for National Board Certified Teachers. Many states have cohorts of NBCTs, both teachers preparing to become board certified and those who already have. Did you know that one-third of this year’s Teachers of the Year are NBCTs?

The National Writing Project has served as a professional community for over 30 years, for thousands of teachers from around the nation (and the world) and in many disciplines. Over 25 years ago, the Capitol Writing Project (the Richmond, Virginia, site of the National Writing Project) changed my teaching life by anchoring me in a community of colleagues who taught me and sustained me in my teaching. I trace back the best of what I know about teaching writing to six weeks during one hot summer in Richmond when I was both a student and a teacher of writing—when I learned with others who encouraged me to keep learning, to try new methods, to reflect upon what I was doing, and to strive even when I didn’t want to. Throughout the summer, these colleagues were there both to support and to nudge me, and to this day I still work with some of them. I continue to be nurtured by that experience because it taught me how to keep on learning and gave me a way to continue to learn how to teach. From that writing project I became involved with my local and state affiliates and that’s how I came to NCTE.

I’m sure that those of us who have participated in learning communities don’t need a report to tell us how influential these communities are both on ourselves and on our students, but two recent reports have done just that:

• The National Staff Development Council’s “Professional Learning in the Learning Profession” points to the importance of learning communities for teachers.

• Met Life’s first in a series of reports from its annual survey of American teachers, Part 1: Effective Teaching and Leadership discusses what collaboration looks like in schools.

These reports can help us convince others of the significance of our learning together to enhance our effectiveness as teachers and in turn to improve our students’ learning. After all, it really does take a community.