PD vs PL

The second breakout session I went to at ULearn14 was PD vs PL: a war you must win by Luke Sumich, Blair Giles and Barb Dysart from Summerland School.

It was obvious that this is a team that works well together. They acknowledge each other and changed the slides according to where the discussion was going.

It was very timely for me as I have become somewhat frustrated at the balance of PD and PL in my life, and that some people seem to not feel the need for PL. This I would like to change.

By looking at andragogy, how adults learn, it quickly becomes obvious that PD programmes are not going to be effective in all cases. Another case of just in case vs just in time learning.

Session was summed up in "Read - Study - Challenge - Experiment - Keep pushing"

So hints I learned on how to effect PL thinking.

• Develop passions of those in the team.
• Ask What are you trying? Individually and in groups. Have that as the staff meeting.
• Build the team
• have in place trust, honesty, communication, teamwork, leadership.
• have the difficult conversations and be honest.
• Create a school Code of Conduct. One using short real life language. Because what are people seeing - behaviour or intentions?
• Cut out staff meetings.  
• Put admin into a separate time - I wonder why it cannot be done by email, at least most of it.
• Info on Google Doc so can be caught up on
• Workshops offered on relevant topics - advertise, state 45 mins  not compulsory.
• School conference in the holidays - not call back days, but a conference with workshops, lanyards and great food. Use in school expertise. Can run as a cluster.

Notes to follow up on:

• The school had worked on aligning their values and beliefs with Julia Atkin. I really like her work and will read up on this again.
• Whole brain model as a way to help people identify their reactions.
• John Holts model of the world we live in. 

In all a very useful session. Thanks