Learning to Grow: Designing a Cohesive Professional Growth System with the New Bedford Public Schools

Abstract

Abstract Our nation’s 16,800 school districts spend billions of dollars a year on professional development. The best professional development is a critical need. Many educators enter teaching underprepared, especially in our communities of concentrated poverty. However, in reality, professional development often reflects our most anachronistic practices, beliefs, and pedagogy. Professional development is often defined as fragmented content, delivered in two days of training in late summer, a periodic half or full day in the school year, a 40-minute weekly meeting before school, and a bi-annual, brief observation with evaluation feedback. Professional development in this form can add to a culture of isolation, fragmentation and competition, rather than serving as a source of community and growth. This capstone details my work, with school and central office leaders in the New Bedford Public Schools, to lay a lasting foundation for an innovative and sustainable professional growth system. At the heart of the story is a belief that solutions for systemic issues live inside the people doing the work, and that the act of designing solutions can grow stronger community. The capstone recounts my process to build trust, deeply define the problems and co-design solutions with stakeholders. Together, we co-designed a new model of professional growth which enables practitioner and student needs and strengths to drive decision-making, grounded in systems, structures and processes that support strong relationships and community. We are in an historic time of rapid, social, economic, and geo-political shifts, with massive evidence of inequity. Children and adults are isolated as never before. The education sector in the United States needs to transform our professional growth system to foster a true adult learning culture where adults can engage in relational, vulnerable, continuous and applied professional growth. Our children and democracy need the education sector to lead the way in modeling how adults learn from and with each other, rather than isolating and competing with each other. Ensuring our educators can grow together is key to strengthening our democracy and ensuring our children receive the education they both need and deserve.