Why Teachers Hate PD

People outside education are sometimes baffled about why teachers are so sour about professional development. Here’s a short video that will make it more understandable:

9 Replies to “Why Teachers Hate PD”

  1. It is possible that the CPD leader was modelling a way of teaching that might be used in the classroom, i.e. using lots of repetition for vocabulary emphasis, repetition and subsequent retention. I understand people might have reservations about using this kind of drill sequence, *ever*, but it does have it’s uses, and with the only clip are seeing being 1 minute long I’m always reluctant to damn a lesson completely. There are minutes of my own lessons that if you saw them as a stand alone would look baffling, potentially even terrible, but as part of a whole would make a lot of sense.

  2. As one who has sat through many PD classes, this ranks with the “best” of them. The leader was undoubtedly “modeling,” but this “lesson” would be just as dreary for kids.

  3. What Larry said! The teacher has already lost the class with poor pacing. What great models…sad.

  4. THIS is often spearheaded by for-profit companies.

    What this lady was doing was READING FROM A PREPARED SCRIPT, and that prepared script was prepared by a for-profit education company.

    Three cheers. Fishing again on the lower Sac. this Friday.

  5. Didn’t the teachers know they were being programmed like Pavlov’s slobbering dogs and B. F. Skinner’s rat lab? I went through that awful training for a week in 1978 and refused to use it on my students. Is this what Common Core is all about?

  6. Wow! in 19 years of teaching, we rarely got past what the school’s current events, memos, etc. were! After P.D. I was in such a foul mood that my family literally hid from me when I came home 🙁

  7. Many teachers in my school despise professional development for this exact reason. We as professionals are not children who need to be read to. If the presenter would hand us their notes and continue teaching we, as teachers, would feel respected and equal to the presenter.

    I find professional development led by teachers is much more helpful than administration driven. The only people who know and understand what I am going through in my classroom are my grade-level teaching partners. If I had to sit through this professional development I would leave feeling defeated and unmotivated instead of excited and ready to try something new.

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