Dive Brief:

• Ten District of Columbia public schools are piloting the myPD program, an initiative that has educators "order" professional development "combos" that match their personal needs.
• Going with the menu metaphor, EdSurge describes the plan as allowing teachers to "choose a side of virtual coaching, with an online module as the main course, or skip the appetizer and spend all their time with online courses."
• The move toward a personalized menu model of PD came from the realization that the district was not ready for Common Core changes and therefore had to target personal problem areas individual teachers had with the new standards. More so, the plan came as the district realized it wasn't doing enough to meet the needs of new teachers or those whose skills had flat-lined.

Dive Insight:

Personalizing instruction for students has been a thing for some time, but the push for distinct PD paths is something of a new phenomenon.

Another example of this trend is Edcamp, a free, one-day "un-conference" where teachers drive their own professional development agendas. Started in 2010 and sticking to a theory of self-learning, Edcamp events have no pre-planned agendas, instead relying on educators to set the tone once they show up and decide what skills they need to work on the most. The idea here is that If you want empowered students, you have to start by empowering your teachers.

Teachers in the field already know what they need the most help with, and they also come with tons of expertise to help others who may be struggling with something they've already gone through. Edcamp and programs like myPD are the antithesis of fancy and costly school consultants who promise to revolutionize campuses with strict agendas. Instead of a blanket approach to learning how to teach, PD should be more woven into the culture and needs of a district's teachers.