Professional Development

Sara made a great point in her presentation regarding professional development training that I hadn't ever thought of before... if a district would spend the equivalent monies to send a few staff members to be trained instead of bringing in presenters for professional development that would allow the district to have on hand certified trained staff. The benefit being that having multiple trained staff members at the building level would be a bonus for the district because the district would have trained staff to train any new staff members. I really had never thought of that as an option, but that is definitely something I will opt for when I am an administrator. Something so simple makes me wonder why our district doesn't do their training this way.
Another thing that I found so interesting was the amount of time that other countries spend on professional development and student contact. I think it is great that that amount of time is spent of PD it obviously proves valuable to test scores being high.
The professional development information that was shared throughout the course of the weekend was very valuable.