At the iNACOL conference this last fall, I encountered many professionals asking the same question. “What does Professional Development for online teachers look like?” Many sessions addressed the topic, but most of it was around processes that were in place to train and evaluate teachers. These were great sessions and highlighted many ways to create effective systems, but many participants were disappointed. They wanted to see content. What were teachers being trained in? What do online teachers do when they participate in professional development? Great questions all. They were looking for modules to take back to their schools and districts. iNACOL recently put out a report around professional development and it too gives great indications of what online teachers need. Since we lack a plethora of content to distribute, we need to think about ways to create an effective professional development program for online teachers. As a teacher and teacher trainer in the online education world, here are some important steps I believe one must take in order to create an effective professional development.

1) Identify what good online teachers do – Take time with teachers to identify and discuss with them what online teachers do. You will hear comments like “They are in constant contact with their teachers,” or “They give useful feedback in a timely matter.” You will end up with many topics to cover.

2) Identify critical components of the school framework – Schools have a vision, and this vision is articulated in its framework which includes, of course, structures and curriculum. Perhaps your school has an iRTI structure. Perhaps you focus on PBL. Perhaps you focus on competency –based pathways. Regardless, teachers will need coaching in these areas of the school framework.

3) Analyze what teachers need – Through both feedback from teachers and things noticed while “walking the halls,” identify what teachers need to know. There is no use in covering everything, and frankly, there is not enough time. You may find that only some teachers need a certain topic, while other content will need to be pushed out to all teachers.

4) Create modules or trainings based on each of these needs – Use a competency-based pathway model to create modules based on needs the teachers. Some of these modules will call for synchronous and asynchronous learning. On a side note, ensure that if a PD session is synchronous, keep it sacred. Don’t crowd it with logistics, announcements or other pieces that might distract from focused, deep learning.

5) Show teachers what it “looks like.” – Teachers, like students, need specific models and examples. If they need help with effective communication with students, play them a recording of a model phone call. Have teachers look at a model welcome email. Show them paragraphs of ideal feedback for student work. Again, examples and models speak volumes.

6) Continue to monitor and set goals with teachers – Be authentic and transparent with teachers with the quality indicators for evaluation. Don’t do “drive by” evaluations, but instead, create a culture of continuous feedback and improvement. Partner with teachers to set goals and improve.

While all of these pieces may seem obvious to many, I see many professionals skip to step 4. Professional development should come from authentic needs and quality characteristics of online teachers. This is just a starting point in the conversation around professional development for online teachers. A major next step in this world of professional for online teacher is to create open source training resources. Although there will specific components unique to individual schools that teachers must be trained and coached in, there are some common pieces all teachers will need in the future.

I’ve had the privilege of talking to many participants who attended and organized the Save Our Schools march that occurred in Washington D.C. Teachers are angry, and the biggest point of contention is student data being factored into student evaluation. But do you really want to know why teachers are angry about reforming evaluation and tenure? Besides the issue of high stakes test and data, there is a major movement that needs to occur before teachers will come to the table and negotiate new forms and criteria for evaluation.

Before reforming the criteria of evaluation, the processes and structures of evaluations must be reformed. In most schools, the ways teachers are evaluated is terrible, and the main thing is it isn’t their fault. They often don’t have any sort of power over the structure of the evaluation including pieces such as time and frequency. The traditional picture of teacher evaluation is what I call “drive-by” teacher evaluation. The administrator comes in once at the beginning of the year to see how teachers are doing. The teacher is then told what he or she is doing well and what needs to be improved. At the end of the year, the administrator returns for the official evaluation to see how the teacher is doing and to see if he or she has met the criteria.

The first problem here is frequency. How can you judge a teacher practice based on two observations per year? Even if the administrator has a good understanding that the evaluation is just a moment in time, and that the whole picture of teaching and learning is not being seen, a few visits to at teacher’s classroom hardly warrants a comprehensive evaluation of the teachers effectiveness. Frequency needs to increase.

Now before teachers start getting angry, there are many provisions that need to happen in order for frequency of visits and evaluation increase. The culture around evaluation needs to be reframed. It needs to be viewed with the proper lens of formative and summative assessments, just like when we evaluate our students. Not all observations and evaluations should “count.” Instead they should be used as they are intended, to provide feedback and goals for the teacher. Teachers need to understand and unpack the criteria. This rarely happens. Teachers don’t use the evaluation rubric because they don’t own them. The criteria must be tied to the mission and vision of the school as well as individual teacher professional growth plans. Those evaluating must engage the teachers in analyzing the criteria and targeting professional development that is truly needed.

Professional development must be occurring in the year between the evaluations in order to arm the teacher with the skills he or she needs to be an effective teachers. Instructional coaches and leaders must be readily available. The problem is this is often the first area of funding that is cut. How can we expect teachers to improve if we don’t provide ongoing professional development and coaching?

If you really want teachers to come to table and even consider using student data as part of their evaluation, then the processes and structures of evaluation must be reformed first. Currently, they are ineffective for both the administrators and the teachers themselves. Instead of being a “hoop to jump through,” let’s make it an authentic part of the teaching profession as I know some schools have.