Retain, Reflect, Redistribute

As we move into our first day set aside for professional development on Friday, it has me reflecting on the barriers that professional development has to being wildly successful. The first is how do we retain information after the session. It is so easy to walk out of the door and back into reality, life, and the next thing on the to-do list. Some say that 50% or more is lost by learners before we walk out the door of a session. The second barrier is time for reflection. The key to adult learning is always just in time learning that has context to a task happening in the near future, but even when this is possible, excellent professional development transfer takes reflection to cement the learning. How can we build reflection into learning so that it is a habit that surrounds our professional development. Finally, professional development often creates trapped wisdom. One teacher learns something, and it is trapped in that classroom. It is essential that new learning is redistributed to others as quickly as possible. This mean sharing with students, teachers within the school, AND to a greater education audience. Let's make professional learning a new level of success by focusing on pushing through the barriers of retaining information, reflecting on learning, and redistributing the new knowledge to others.