Professional Development Tools & Resources Guide

How can staff development best be organized? It’s a question of what is most important, and how it can best be accomplished. It is also important to look at building the leadership capacities of your staff.  Remember that development is about growth, advancement and moving forward.  Staff development includes the work that we do to build together and to grow individually.  Good professional development is challenging and energizing.  When you leave a worthwhile professional development event, you feel full of both ideas and energy.

This guide will provide both philosophy and examples for powerful professional development. We’ll talk generally about your approach to professional development, and we’ll get specific about practices around particular content and aspects of your program.  We will examine what sets Big Picture schools apart, in terms of structure and approach to professional development and we will provide concrete examples of what this work can look like.

We’ve collected approaches from across the network around what works in our schools in order to motivate, to plan, to analyze and to reflect.  We have approached topics in terms of priorities, and also chronologically.  We begin with what makes good leaders, move on to what makes good staff, and always maintain focus on our students, as we determine what good professional development can be.

Our hope is that this guide will provide you with both inspiration and tools for your work.