We made it! Another school year has passed, testing season is finally over, and summer is upon us! This time of year often feels like the end of a chapter, with a whole mix of emotions: excitement about the summer (and maybe the next school year), relief from the exhaustion and stress, and perhaps even grief about moving on from these students and this teaching assignment into a whole new year. So when we start to see the conferences, workshops, and professional development offerings on the summer calendar, we naturally have a variety of reactions. For some of us, it’s a welcome opportunity to finally reflect on our practice outside of the stress and bustle of the school year. For others, it’s merely a requirement of our jobs, and we can imagine many other things we’d rather be doing, as what’s happening over the next two months (or even tomorrow) isn’t even on our radars.
Regardless of where our heads are at during professional development this summer, there is great potential to have a major impact on the next year (and we may even catch ourselves smiling, too!). Here are three tips for having an enjoyable, productive experience with PD this summer.
- Plan on taking away just a couple (great) things this summer.
There will be a lot of strategies and resources introduced to us during PD this summer. Some will really resonate with you and make you excited, and some will not seem so relevant and helpful. But regardless of what we find, taking in too much might be overwhelming. It also might be counterproductive. It is very easy to get excited about incorporating new strategies and resources into lessons when we’re in “planning mode” in the summer, only to find they slip to the wayside when we’re bombarded with the stresses of the school year.
Instead, set an intention to take away just one or two key things from PD this summer. What are the one or two strategies that you know will be a game changer for your classroom? Go to PD with a focus on finding something that compels you, or something that you really want to implement. The advantage of the summer is we don’t have to feel desperate – we don’t have our kids yet, and there isn’t (as much) pressure to bring test scores up. This means we don’t have to adopt the mentality of “I’ll try anything!” Instead, engage in the PD by thinking, “Is this something I really want to have in my classroom?” If the answer is yes, then its implementation can be a goal for the next school year.
- Remember that next school year will be a NEW school year.
In this summer’s PD, it might be very tempting to reflect on the hardest moments of this past school year and think, “I should have used this strategy,” or “I wish I had done this differently.” While reflection can be a powerful way to grow professionally, it’s important we don’t dwell on the past. Next school year will have a different set of students (or perhaps the same set of students that will be a year older), maybe even a new teaching assignment, but no matter what, it will be a completely different year. New challenges will arise, and old challenges will not arise in the same ways. Whatever didn’t go as well as you had liked this past year, it’s okay. It’s in the past. Brighter days are ahead.
But reflecting on the past school year is inevitable, because that’s our most recent context to frame our thinking about this new professional learning. So if we’re going to think about this past school year, I recommend trying to remember the best days. Remember that lesson that went so well, where you and the students were smiling, and they seemed to learn so much? Remember how you saw what they were capable of and how inspirational that was? Know that next year’s students are also capable of that, and you, as a teacher, are capable of delivering that great lesson. Let that one day be the standard you hold yourself and your students to next year. We can have great lessons like that, and if we aspire to it every day, our students will rise to the occasion more often than not. - Put your personal development above your professional development.
There are very few professions in the world that require two months of recharging in order to endure the rest of the year (in fact, as I wrack my brain, teachers and astronauts are the only ones that come to mind). This summer is, first and foremost, about recharging. Go to the PD that you need to or that you’re really drawn to, but don’t let it make you miss out on that vacation, that concert, or that lunch with an old friend. Make your number one priority to give yourself joy, not only throughout the year but particularly in this special time when you’re not responsible for a classroom full of students.
My counselor often references the metaphor of one’s cup of joy that they share with others. The temptation is to pour from our cup into others’ cups until we run out of joy. Instead, she tells me to fill my cup of joy over and over again, as much as I can, until it spills over. Let your life be so filled with joy that it spills over to others and, when the school year comes, to your students as well.
This summer is about you. Here’s to joy.
Dr. Stephen Fleenor is the creator of The Visual Non–Glossary, a visual resource that helps students build language and meaning through authentic, cooperative learning.
Seidlitz Education 