Effective Professional Development for Educators

[MUSIC PLAYING] So in terms of direct training, I mean, in terms of training the teachers, the kind of one to one training, coaching, I think the first level needs be it as a pairing level. So we are going to walk into a classroom. We are going to pair ourselves with reinforcement by identifying what the teacher is doing well. I know that sounds really like a no-brainer. We talk about the day how often-- can I borrow your notes for a second? You know, oftentimes, we walk into a classroom and we say, OK, you just keep teaching. And I sit there and watch the teacher and I just take notes. And that's horrible. That is so unsettling for a teacher and likely punishing. And we want that to be in reverse. We want to walk into a classroom and a teacher to say, oh, this is great. They're going to tell me I'm doing some good stuff. We want too-- just like working with kids, again, you walk into a model and you let kids know that you're important. They what you to be there because around you, they can demonstrate success. And so I walk into a classroom that pairing. I sit down. I tell folks why I'm there. I nod. I find good things to look for. And then we have a discussion instead of me laying out a litany instead of what's not correct. Next level that, after we've kind of established what most folks would call rapport-- and I'm going to talk about pairing-- I'm going to be very selective about the targets that I identify. We talked today about how any middle school student can walk in and figure out, hey, there's not something great about our classroom. That's a really basic skill and not a very sophisticated skill. So as a consultant or as somebody that's providing technical assistance, I want to walk into a classroom and I want to help make a determination about what change can we make in that classroom that, one, will result in the quickest reinforcement for the teacher so they want you to keep coming so they can read-- so you really get-- that's what that buy-in means. So like, wow, when I'm with you, this stuff works. And then the other piece is which one is going to make the most impact in the classroom? What is the most important at that time? Certainly if you have a student that's engaged in self-injury, it might be a long, protracted intervention plan. But you've got to start there because of the nature of the problem that you're called in for. But I'm selecting a small number of targets-- again, not a list of 15 things that are wrong. What are the few things that we can start to work on? Then I'm going to operationalize those things. And so instead of saying to a teacher, you know, we need to work on your pacing or you need to get your classroom organized, I'm going to come up with an outcome that's going to say, what does that look like? Maybe your pacing means that I want to see a certain number of trials in a period of time if you're doing discreet trial training. If I'm talking about an organization, I'm going to come in. I'm going to measure whether or not-- whether materials are out of place. Your desk looks a mess. The kids can't move through your desk. Your kids with wheelchairs, they can't fit around the classroom. So these are really black and white changes, things that we can measure whether or not they occur. We're going to set criteria for success and timelines and then we're going to provide them feedback contingent upon the performance of those. So once we set those targets, some of the things we're going to have to ask them to do are not in their repertoire. They're skills they're going to have to teach. We asked folks today, how many folks know what simultaneous prompting is? And there are like a few. It's like, so sometimes, they just, in their training programs, haven't received training on a specific procedure. So I'm going to go in and instead of saying, well, you need to use more systematic instructions, I'm going to say, you know what? You're a new teacher. The easiest to use is probably simultaneous prompting. I think it'll work with these kids. Let we show you how to do it. So we're going to use what's called behavior skills training. And behavior skills training has a few core components that have to all be there. First, I'm going to give them a checklist, a task analysis, of instructions. This is what you have to do. And what's really important about that is you want to really operationalize all the steps. So what happens if the student doesn't perform the way that you want them to? If you don't get them something to do in that instance, they're going to drop the whole plan. Then I'm going to model with them, this is what it looks like after-- so, excuse me, after I get them the instruction, I give them the opportunity for questions, I model for them. Then I give them an opportunity to practice to fidelity. Unless they practice to fidelity, if they make an error during this-- so maybe I'll get them three to five times to practice the skill. If they make an error, I will stop. I will give them feedback. I'll show them again and then give them an opportunity to get to 100%. So again, what this does is it helps me ensure that there weren't any misconceptions about what I ask them to do. It lets me see them demonstrate the skill so I know that they can do it before I-- this should be the most important step before I even expect somebody to follow through. You wouldn't teach a kids to 60% fidelity on a skill, come back two weeks later, and be frustrated if he didn't get it. And I think it's sometimes the same way with our consultations. We tell somebody to do something. We kind of show them. But they don't really have it up to fidelity. We come back, they're not doing it, we get frustrated. And we shouldn't expect any more from that. The final element is make sure that there's ongoing feedback. And again, lots of different ways to do that-- we can use technology. We talked today about some different varieties because again, a lot of us have very limited resources in terms of travel time to get back and forth. So being able to check in via video conferences, being able to use some sort of shared software so-- districts are different, but using, like, Google spreadsheet where they're sharing data back and forth with you. So you can give them feedback on that. You just want to be able to see something they're doing and get them feedback so it's more likely to maintain that. And then that kind of closes the loop. They meet your criteria. They're doing great. And then if it's appropriate and you're working on overall change in that class, you can select new targets. But I typically don't select, you know, like a dozen targets and say, here's where we're going to go. It's like pointing to Mount Everest with somebody that has just learned to walk and say, there you go. That's not what we want to do. We want a very behavioral approach. Take it step by step.