Teachers attend professional development activities fairly often.  Today (Friday) I attended an all-day meeting of reading specialists and ELL (English Language Learners)  teachers.  I always felt that if I can come away from a day like today with even one new and/or helpful idea or insight, then it has been an above average professional development day.  Today was a bonus day.  I learned two things that are worthwhile.

 (1) I heard a joke I will relate in the next post.  I’m still chuckling with hap-penis.  That should be worth many smiles in the future as I read children’s writing and think about that little boy’s question.

(2) I learned that Lester Laminack (author of wonderful books such as Trevor’s Wiggly-Wobbly Tooth, Saturdays and Teacakes” and Jake’s 100th Day of School“) told another reading specialist in our group that teachers need to stop being pharmacists and become doctors instead.  In other words, we need to stop doing what is prescribed by other people (programs, procedures, practices).  Instead, we need to know the children we teach and then do what we know is best for each of those children. 

I started thinking about that metaphor.  It is powerful.  Too often, we teachers are so overwhelmed and limited by the prescribed and mandated programs and testing that are dictated by the school board or other leaders, that we are unable to do what we KNOW is right for the children in our classes.   

High standards and high expectations are what we want for our students and ourselves, but don’t tie our hands when we’re working to meet those expectations.  Becoming the doctors of our profession rather than the pharmacists is not something that’s immediately attainable, but it’s certainly a worthwhile and empowering goal.  It will ultimately be what makes education what it should be.

One professional development day with a gain of one new humorous story and one new insight.  It was a good way to end the work week.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 17th, 2006 at 11:09 pm and is filed under Teaching/Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.