Professional development for teachers often depends on the licensing requirements of the state in which they live and teach, not to mention their school or district’s level of support for it. While many districts have curriculum advisors, teaching coaches or other staff members assigned to match teachers with appropriate programs and resources, knowing what’s out there can help you advocate for yourself to get the experience that best suits your needs in the classroom.

When Maureen Fitzgerald, a teaching coach in Wisconsin, helps new teachers to put together their state-mandated five-year professional development plan, she begins by finding out what they want out of it. Some are looking to strengthen their knowledge in their own content area, while others may have long-term goals to move into administration.

“Then we look at what the teacher’s learning style is – maybe they are a visual, auditory or kinesthetic learner,” she says. “Some professional development programs sit you in a lecture hall and talk to you for eight hours. A good teacher would never do that to students, so I’m not sure why so many professional development programs do it to teachers.”

Lifestyle factors may also come into play, says Fitzgerald, especially if the school or district that a teacher works for doesn’t have days set aside for professional development during the school year. For example, teachers with a bustling home life may not be able to focus on online courses as easily as they might at seminars or courses outside of the home.

Coaches and mentors like Fitzgerald are becoming more common throughout the country, especially for new teachers. They specialize in knowing what’s out there, what’s affordable and, most importantly, what other teachers recommend.

In-person learning and networking: Conferences, conventions, university extension programs, academies, boot camps, seminars, “externships” and community partnerships 

Whether it’s a daylong session with other teachers within a given district, a statewide teacher’s convention or a national conference, in-person meetings are tried and true when it comes to professional development for educators.

“I found that while online and other virtual professional opportunities are great for building content knowledge, I prefer conferences,” says educational consultant Candace Lindemann of Suffolk County, Long Island. “Nothing beats networking with other educators in person when this is possible.  You not only find yourself trading tips, resources, and ideas, you also emerge reinvigorated from this face-to-face contact and concentrated discussion of education.  Off-site conferences have the added advantage of encountering fresh perspectives, although building a project with your team at your school also has its merits.”

In-person opportunities come in all different levels of intensity, and in all different lengths, whether the subject is literacy, technology training, multiculturalism, differentiated instruction, classroom management or metacognition.

“From the feedback that I have gotten, workshops or conventions tend to live up to the reputation of the university that is hosting them,” says Fitzgerald.

Newer on the horizon are options like “Externships,” which give teachers a chance to work in a “real-world” institution for a summer and take that experience back to the classroom.“These should be smartly constructed and monitored to get the most out of the experience,” says Jack Powers, Vice President of the Graphic Arts Advisory Commission, a volunteer group that works with the New York City school system and organizes career and technical education (CTE) training to high school students. Community partnerships, notes Powers have a similar intrinsic value to externships, in that they can also supply teachers with that same kind of “real-world” perspective. 

At home: Video seminars, webinars, e-seminars, online courses, interactive environments, discussion boards, lservs, e-lists, books and professional journals

The tumultuous economic climate has school districts tightening their budgets, making some less inclined or unable to pay to send teachers to conferences in distant cities. It has made professional development options that can be done at home more attractive to many. Computer-based options were once dominated by private companies, but more and more are now offered by universities and other established educational institutions like educational foundations, non-profit organizations, professional associations, unions and textbook publishers.

There is more value to at-home learning than cost efficiency and convenience. It’s especially well suited to teachers who do their best learning independently. Online seminars and reading materials can provide valuable and to-the-point resources. It can also be used to create an online culture of sharing among peers.

“Classroom teaching -- especially in a big system with lots of politics and peer pressure -- can be an isolating experience,” says Powers. “Online affinity groups expose people to like-minded individuals all over the world and can open doors to new ideas and gigabytes of digital teaching resources.”  

Bits and bytes aside, books and professional journals – perhaps the most traditional of all forms of professional development — remain as relevant today as ever.

Tracy Zollinger Turner is an arts, culture and education writer from Columbus, Ohio.

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