Quit Designing PD Around Solutions

We tend to design professional learning experiences around solutions to problems. But the real problem is that learning is complex, people are messy, and systems are wild.

We don’t have solutions.

And it’s totally okay to admit this. In fact, admitting this is the first step in discovering real solutions.

But we don’t tend to do this. Instead, if children appear to be struggling as readers and writers we tend to:

• Frame this as a problem.

• Find an expert with a solution.

• Hire the expert to deliver the solution.

• Expect everyone to implement the solution with fidelity.

• Blame them when they don’t or worse…

• …Assume they aren’t implementing with fidelity when children still appear to struggle.

So, what if we designed professional learning experiences around opportunities, instead?

For instance, if children appear to be struggling as readers and writers we could:

• Engage in rich discovery work, in order to learn how they’re struggling and why they (the kids) think this is happening.

• Listen to teachers and administrators and parents, too.

• Bump all of that perception data up against standardized and local assessment data.

• Define a promising learning opportunity.

• Expect everyone to come to the table with questions worth chasing and research worth sinking into.

• Call people to action, documentation, and reflection.

• Bring them back together to interpret that evidence. Surface patterns. Notice trends. Refine the questions.

• Study performance.

• Study the other things that matter as well.

• Create better theories and contextualized solutions.

The beautiful thing about this approach (well, there are quite a few actually but I’ll keep this brief): Everyone learns, including facilitators like me, administrators, kids, and parents.

It took me a minute as a fledgling facilitator, but as an experienced one, I know this much is true: When we lead by delivering solutions, we create bias, narrow access, and limit possibility from the jump.

Then, we begin shaming and blaming one another when the proposed solution doesn’t deliver or worse: fails to stick after lifting hope.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Each of my Wednesday posts this summer has been about designing responsive PD that is built to bend…even break. It’s my experience that multimodal micro-experiences can be stacked for effect, in order to right-size each offer and make everything more accessible, too.

I’ve said a lot about stacked PD as a considerate approach for adult learners because it’s true: These invitations are respectful of their time, energy, and resources.

I haven’t said much about how this approach builds capacity, though. How it shifts culture and flattens hierarchies. But it does, and in my experience, that’s the greatest benefit of this particular design shift. When we align PD around common learning opportunities but take care to create responsive, agile, and accessible pathways through it? More people engage. They learn things we didn’t expect. They show up to our shared work eager to contribute much that we aren’t able to.

And people like me decenter ourselves, check our authority at the door, and step into the role of facilitator.

I find that this is how respect is earned and trust is built.

I know from experience that this can be an uncomfortable evolution. So many of us come up in a field that confuses authority, polish, and perfection with competence.

Competence is far harder to cultivate, though.

It’s quieter, too.

And if I’m being honest, I have to say this as well: When we fail to lead with authority, we tend to provoke the skeptics in the room, and some of them might very well be the people who hired us.

Until we deliver results.

You don’t have to be the expert, the boss, the authority, the guru, the master, the legend, or the sage in order to create impactful professional learning experiences. You don’t have to speak from big stages or spend all of your free time networking across social media in order to inspire people to build or sustain relationships with you.

You don’t have to market a solution.

You can simply help people define and chase better opportunities, allowing evidence to light their path and documentation to determine a just-right fit.

That’s how you get results.

If this is an awareness you already have or one that you’re eager to grow into, come join us here this summer. I’d love to open our circle to you.