Every governance team worth its salt will strive to provide its teaching staff with crucial learning and development opportunities. Investing resources in this way unquestionably fortifies the school board’s paramount objective of improving student achievement by increasing teacher capacity, while often lessening teacher burnout. Supporting staff’s professional development (PD) goals can have great value, including better conditions for enhanced student learning.

Some questions to ask when collaborating with the administration around professional development plans are:

• How are we building sufficient time into the planning process for teachers to reflect on their PD needs and assessing successes and challenges as the process moves forward?
• What avenues are we providing to allow staff to feel a sense of inclusion, genuine ownership and pride in preparing PD plans and initiatives?
• How do we celebrate the commitments made by teachers in developing their PD learning opportunities?
• How can we maximize motivation and engagement to encourage teacher participation and teacher leadership in selecting PD topics relevant to the classroom experience?
• How do we consider the broadest needs and daily challenges faced by teaching staff as they balance a desire for high-quality PD programs with the realities of time pressures, work obligations and family/personal commitments that can complicate their ability to take advantage of PD offerings fully?
• How do we develop protocols and practices that encourage and support creative, collaborative processes in district PD sessions?
• How do we encourage and extend year-round interaction and collaboration among staff after specific PD initiatives have concluded?

When board members and administration leaders commit to allocating resources to support continuing PD for staff, it is likely that improvement in student performance will follow.