Nicole,
It is important to have a professional development plan so you know where to concentrate your time as you strive to expand your knowledge and expertise. These professional development efforts will increase your personal satisfaction as a professional educator. Keep up the good work.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
Continuing to take courses to refine my teaching skills and also having my pears who have more years of teaching mentor me with teaching styles and techniques.
Instructional style can be developed by furthering professional development in areas that we feel weak in.
Aside from taking online courses like these, continuing education with professional organizations can also help improve instructional styles and techniques for further professional development.
Anthony,
What are some examples of professional seminars you would like to attend.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
I can attend professional seminars.
Tyrella,
What are some ways you have found that help you to stay current with your knowledge?
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
Observe other instructors who are effective.
By keeping a current knowledge of new ways to refine my classroom instructional time.
I think we as educators can also atend professional inservices to help us stay up to date on new topics and movitional ideas
Kimberley,
Good point. Feedback is so important to our instructional improvement.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
Carmelita,
Break down your content into small segments such as mini-lectures of 15-20 minutes. Once you have lectured over a concept then do an activity for a few minutes. The activity can be a discussion, Q&A, small group, case study, etc.. The idea is to provide variety in the learning process. This helps learners with short attention spans to stay engaged.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
I can take professional development courses, I could also attend courses that are designed for adult learners to get a better grasp of how adult learners feel and think by essentially placing myself in my students shoes. Also I can use course evaluations and be reasonable and honest with myself about thier complaints/suggestions
I agree that much of what I have learned so far about teaching is by trial and error. As a preceptor in a clinical setting or a speaker at an inservice I invite feedback from students on what they thought worked best and which areas they did not find effective. Using that information I can alter the way I teach. I am happy now to have the opportunity to have instructional courses offered to me.
I am a more of a hands on instructor with a great deal of sharing and discussing. However some of my class material needs to be delievered in a lecture format.Being ADHA this tends to be my weakess syle.Do you have any suggestions? :-(
I can learn frome other instructors as well as my performance evaluations. All these should be able to help keep me on my toes and be a better instructor.
I think my instructional style is adapted to the group of students I have in the class. The school's curriculum is structured in a module styl. We are allowed to move things around within the module to work best for the students and get everything done in a timely manner, yet make enough time for review and remediation.
Jonathan,
Great to hear that this information and the videos are helpful in your professional development. Keep up the good work of gaining additional information about effective instructional delivery.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
Morgan,
Good point and one we need to remember as we plan our instructional delivery. The more variety we can offer our students the more opportunities there will be to offer content in their learning preference area. You idea of using student surveys to gain additional information about student preferences is a good one because not only do you gain the information but your students will appreciate that you are trying to get to know about them.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
Lisa,
Good plan and I know you and your students are going to like the results that are achieved.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
