As much as it’s the teacher’s job to teach students, they also need to do some learning themselves. That is the purpose of professional development, which is some form of education for teachers that can enhance or better their teaching or classroom environment. The duration of these workshops varies as some can go for only a few hours while other can go on for a week. They are normally more effective when they are based on the teacher’s area of expertise. However, they can learn overall strategies for classroom management or reading comprehension that can benefit any topic in any age group.
How professional development is helpful
Professional development is very imperative and necessary for teachers. First, it helps them keep up with the latest developments in education and in the curriculum since education is ever changing and ever growing. What they teach their students today won’t be what they will be teaching some years later. Not only does it help teachers acquire new learning techniques, it also gives them a platform to interact with other educators in various areas of study and that helps them improve on their own teaching. Workshops that take a longer duration of time are more effective than shorter ones because they involve lots of hands on activities and interaction.
New strategies
Through professional development, the teachers are able to acquire new strategies which they can then pass on to their students. They are also equipped with tips that can be utilized both in the classroom and the community at large.
Online professional development
Thanks to the internet, professional development workshops can now be taken online through different platforms such as County Board of Education offices or colleges that offer education degrees at Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctoral level. Depending on the program, online professional development workshops can either be free of charge or charged a small fee. Just like any other college class, the workshops may sometimes require completion of given assignments or participating in group work where several individuals sit down together and complete a given task together. As much as online professional development workshops are convenient, they lack active participation and interaction and that is why I believe that real-life professional development for teachers is still better.
When is online workshop necessary?
Never the less, some circumstances may require one to use online professional development services. They include; not being in close proximity with venue of workshop and being overly occupied and busy hence no time to attend workshops physically among others. In order to ensure that they are competent enough to access and utilize online services, educators and teachers should take it upon them to learn more on computers and how they operate. By so doing, they will acquire basic computer skills that are a necessity in knowing how to access and utilize the internet. After acquisition of the computer skills, the next necessary investment is a laptop. This is what one will require to access the online workshops. Although it may be a little bit expensive to acquire one at first, it is a worthwhile investment.