Motivating our Teachers in PD and Training

Recently I was approached by Teacher Magazine to write an article around how to motivate teachers during Professional Development and Training. The full article “All Aboard: Reluctant passengers on the training journey” will appear in their March edition. Below are some thoughts on the topic:

Motivating teachers is difficult. We don’t always make the best students. Like doctors often make challenging patients and mechanics often drive cars in desperate need of a tune up, teachers as a group tend to be reluctant passengers on the training journey. I too remember a day, a lifetime ago, holed up on a pupil free day, in some behaviour management workshop doing the umpteenth role play with a presenter that was the educational equivalent of Ambien. The delivery was poor, the match for our needs was worse and unfortunately for all concerned the disengagement was extreme.

So how do we create dynamic training which gets the most of our participants and encourages them to get the best out of themselves? When preparing for this article I contacted some old teacher buddies and asked them two simple questions: what turns you on and what turns you off professional development training in your schools? Overwhelming the response came back that the training has to be relevant to them and it has to honour their existing experience. This seemed like a good place to start.

One way to do this is to issue a “keeping it real” card to each participant. The front of the card actually says “KEEPING IT REAL” and the back of the card is for “action points”. Explain to your group that the card serves two purposes. Firstly, you will encourage them to write some action points for implementation post-course during the session. This ensures that they are taking things from the workshop that they can apply straight away. Secondly, if the presenter stays from relevance, the participants are instructed to hold up the side that says “KEEPING IT REAL”. This is surprisingly fun and keeps both the trainer and the participants on their toes. It also gives some control back to the participants and supports a certain buy-in to the workshop.

Marc Ratcliffe
CEO, MRWED Group
Follow Me on twitter: @MRWED_CEO