NCCAT was unique in that it made me reflect on the potential for professional development: the potential for future PD in my district and the potential that was wasted in PD’s past. I love the sessions with Paul and Justin on technology and strategies in the classroom. I have many ideas from project management strategies to small, inexpensive activities that will be easily implemented next year. I liked these sessions because they were broad enough to work in all grade levels, whereas some sessions were very specific to a particular area.
I have heard many folks mention that at NCCAT they felt they were treated as professionals, and I absolutely agree with that. I wanted to reflect on what this meant and how the details of NCCAT compared to other PD I have participated in. At what point do we stop feeling like we are valued as professionals?
The overarching theme that made NCCAT special was that we all desperately wanted to be there to better ourselves as professionals and to figure out how to improve the education of the students we teach. I do not remember a moment throughout the week when any individual complained about their situation AND was unwilling to listen to advice from another Fellow. To see colleagues go from excited to enthralled is one of the most motivating aspects of PD. How do you capture that, bottle it, and take it all the way back to, in my case, east of I-95 where resources are significantly limited and complaints are at their highest? How do you combat statements like, “I can’t do that with MY kids.”, “I don’t have time. I still have so much curriculum to teach.”, “I can’t handle the noise.”? How do these trivial roadblocks prevent educators from wanting to rise to a new and innovative level? I hear all the time, that a particular teacher has phenomenal test scores so he/she must be doing something right. When I hear this I automatically think that the reason why the kids are succeeding is because they’ve been trained to regurgitate information and they are exceptionally good at it. Our job as Kenan Fellows is to take one for the team in regards to test scores and help our future leaders get to the point where their lives are not about A, B, C, and D, but rather about solving a problem and communicating knowledge with others. Academic language is the key to the assessment of knowledge! This is a monumental task, but after NCCAT I realize, very clearly, why it is not only important, but imperative, that we do all we can to reach as many people as possible to aid in the transformation of education in North Carolina.
Well said, Jennifer! You drew me in with your desire to examine what it means to feel like a professional or be treated like one. Through your statements, you have demonstrated that, even though you are early in your career, you clearly understand what it means to be a professional. When I was the Executive Director at NCCAT, I often heard teachers say they felt that NCCAT treated them as professionals and I became interested in understanding what they meant. Your blog post goes a long way toward illustrating what professionalism looks like in education.