3 Approaches to Professional Development in Nashville

This year, Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools started taking three new approaches to professional development. By hosting drop-in sessions, helping teachers rethink lessons and bringing instructional designers onto grade level teams, the district tries to be more intentional about integrating technology.
 

Create a relaxed environment for teachers to learn

Before last year, the urban district of nearly 78,000 students didn't have an instructional technology or learning technology department. Instead, technology fell under Title II in the federal programs department. Inevitably, that created a lag in adoption of vital technology, said Kecia Ray, executive director of learning technology.

When she met with a group of students last week, one of them said he had watched a documentary on technology in schools. And he was concerned about a lack of technology in his school and his teachers not being able to use it because he didn't didn't think he'd be prepared for college.

"A sixth-grade student saw the need for our department to exist so that he could be a better student in college," Ray said. "That's wild!"

In the Martin Professional Development Center, her department opened up a place for teachers to hang out. In an atmosphere like a student center on a college campus, teachers experiment with different technology and ask questions.
 

Start Extreme Makeover: Lesson Plan Edition

Along with the drop-in professional development at the center, the Nashville district sends instructional designers to work with teachers in their classrooms. Teachers ask to participate in Extreme Makeover: Lesson Plan Edition. With this approach, teachers bring their content knowledge, and designers bring their instructional design knowledge together to refresh lessons.

"We basically work with teachers to kind of rethink their lesson design to be more engaging and interactive for their kids," Ray said. "And that is usually going to involve adding technology to it, but we don't want technology to be the first thing we start talking about."

Instead, they start talking about instruction standards, assessments, activities and projects. Then they ask how they would feel about using specific resources.
 

Embed instructional designers into grade level teams

While the makeover focuses on individual teachers, the district's third approach takes a big picture approach. Sometimes a principal will ask the Learning Technology Department to work with a school. Then instructional designers work with grade-level teams.

They think strategically about the content they're covering. And they look for ways to create projects that flow thematically through all content areas. They also consider flipping the classrooms so that students can access some online content outside of school and work with their teacher on projects during class.

Rather than visiting the school occasionally, the instructional designers go to meetings every week and become part of the planning team. This less threatening and less intimidating approach shows teachers that the designers are there to support them, Ray said.
 

The next step: build a professional learning network

These three approaches have been working well so far, Ray said. So has a district professional development video channel that showcases what teachers are doing in their classrooms.

In the winter quarter, the department plans to start working on a new Innovation Network.

In each school, Ray's team will identify a lead innovator and create a professional learning network to feed these innovators research, grant ideas, opportunities and more information so they don't become frustrated.

"Sometimes when you're an innovator in a sea of non-innovators, you feel like you're in a cave and nobody's hearing what you're saying," Ray said. "And we want to connect them across the district so that they can be fed and energized and have a collective momentum to move the whole district."