Professional Development for Educators FAQ

What do teachers actually want from PD days?

Breakfast, lunch, and time to work in their classrooms. Research on effective PD says it should be sustained throughout the year, not crammed into three marathon days before school starts. Give people a focused one-hour session, then let them use the rest of the day to prepare for students.

Are we canceling school too often for PD days?

Yes. Parents have lost patience with constant early dismissals, PD days, and four-day weeks. We have 180 days -- less than half the calendar year -- and every one of them matters. Do your professional development, but stop eating into instructional time to do it.

Why are there so many mandatory trainings, and why are they the same every year?

Because nobody has to pay a cost for making a training mandatory. If departments had to account for the dollar value of 6,000 teachers sitting through another hour-long module, they'd think twice. Mandatory training that's undifferentiated and repeated year after year is clearly out of control, and the way teachers hack through it tells you everything about its value.

What's the best way to handle mandatory compliance trainings like bloodborne pathogens?

Let teachers do them on their own time in their own rooms. If the information hasn't changed and they know it, let them pass the quiz and move on. There's no reason everyone needs to sit together in a room watching the same video they watched last year. Give people a summary sheet, let the training play in the background, and stop wasting hours on something that could take minutes.

Do principals actually protect teachers from excessive PD mandates?

More than teachers realize. Principals are constantly filtering what reaches their staff, saying no to things or quietly not implementing mandates they know are a waste of time. The real solution is for central office to stop creating so many mandates in the first place, but in the meantime, know that your principal is running interference for you.

Why do teachers say PD is irrelevant?

Because it usually is. When PD is aimed at everyone and specific to no one, of course it feels like a waste. Teachers don't hate professional development -- they hate generic, one-size-fits-all sessions that have nothing to do with their daily work. Subject-specific PD is consistently valued. Generic PD erodes trust in the entire concept.

Is teaching really just one job?

No, and that's the problem with most PD. A woodshop teacher, a PE teacher, and an English teacher have three fundamentally different jobs. When we build all professional development around one default subject -- usually language arts or math -- everyone else is left wondering what this has to do with them. PD must match the actual job.

Why don't teachers learn more about cognitive science and the science of learning?

Because teacher preparation programs barely cover it. Most education degrees include child development courses but almost nothing about how memory, retrieval practice, spaced repetition, and cognitive load actually work. These are the most practical, evidence-based tools we have for improving instruction, and we're not teaching them to teachers.

Why won't the myth of learning styles die?

Because it feels intuitively true, even though it's not. Cognitive psychologists have debunked it for decades, but "everyone learns differently" is emotionally satisfying. The reality is that learning style should be matched to the material, not the person -- everyone does math better on paper, and everyone processes music better by hearing it. That's a property of the subject, not the learner.

What happens when our professional identity is tied to a debunked practice?

It's painful, but we have to deal with it. When balanced literacy was discredited, a lot of educators -- myself included -- had to reckon with the fact that we'd invested heavily in something that didn't work. The key is to anchor your professional identity in evidence and continuous learning, not in any specific practice. Practices change; a commitment to doing what's best for students doesn't.

Is education research still useful for practitioners?

It should be, but the field has drifted. Much of what gets published at places like AERA is now written to impress other academics, not to help teachers and students. The incentive structure rewards novel findings and jargon, not practical impact. Practitioners need research translated into actionable guidance, and right now that's not happening nearly enough.

Do master's degrees actually hurt student outcomes?

No. The often-cited negative correlation between master's degrees and test scores is almost certainly a selection effect -- highly qualified teachers get assigned the students who struggle most. Don't let one misleading statistic dismiss the value of advanced education. The real question is whether your program built capacity that made you better at your job.

Why does traditional feedback on teaching usually fail?

Three conditions must be met for feedback to work: it has to be accurate, welcomed by the recipient, and sufficient to actually change practice. The third one is where we almost always fall short. Telling someone to do something differently doesn't give them the capacity to do it. And the feedback sandwich -- compliment, suggestion, compliment -- makes everything feel performative and insincere. Video coaching platforms like Sibme address the third condition directly — teachers can replay relevant moments, respond to timestamped coach questions, and reflect over days rather than in a single rushed post-conference.

What should replace the feedback sandwich?

Real conversation. Stop playing the fake feedback game where the administrator pretends to have useful advice and the teacher pretends to appreciate it. Teaching is cognitive work -- 90% of it is invisible. Let teachers do most of the talking. Ask about their thinking. Learn about their practice before you try to change it. Sibme makes this concrete — coaches leave questions tied to specific moments in a recorded lesson, and teachers respond in their own time, turning a one-way monologue into a genuine back-and-forth.

What's Charlotte Danielson's most important contribution?

Not her evaluation framework -- her book on professional conversation. *Talk About Teaching: Leading Professional Conversations* argues that if teaching is intellectual work, growth comes through dialogue, not forms and checklists. The framework became a compliance tool in many states, but Danielson's real vision was always about conversation that changes thinking.

Should experienced teachers be evaluated differently than new teachers?

A streamlined process for veterans makes sense, and many districts already do this. But no teacher should be completely off the radar. People can fall apart at any point in their career -- burnout, population changes, personal struggles. The answer isn't more formal observations; it's being in classrooms frequently enough that you already know what's going on before the evaluation even starts. For experienced teachers who want to keep growing on their own terms, Sibme supports peer coaching models — they can record and review their own practice without it being tied to administrative evaluation.

Is it fair to expect teachers to keep improving their entire careers?

Up to about year seven, the learning curve is steep and growth is real. After that, individual improvement tapers off, and most improvement opportunities belong to the system, not the individual. We need to stop acting like we can endlessly squeeze more performance out of people and start focusing on the systems, structures, and conditions that make better teaching possible.

What should I do when a new teaching strategy doesn't work the first time?

Don't abandon it. Every new practice has a learning curve, and you're not going to be good at it on the first try. That's normal. The difference between schools that improve and schools that don't is often just persistence -- sticking with evidence-based practices long enough to get past the clunky early stages and reach fluency.

Is more teacher training always the answer when students struggle?

No. Sometimes the student needs a different environment, not a teacher with more training. No amount of PD prepares a general education teacher to safely handle every behavioral or academic challenge. Some students genuinely need smaller settings, more adults, and specialized support. Expecting training to replace appropriate placement is unfair to both teachers and students.

What about the advice to "build relationships" with students?

Stop saying it. It's too vague to be actionable, and it becomes dangerous when administrators tell teachers to "build a relationship" with a student who threatened them. Instead, tell teachers to treat students *as if* -- as if you're glad to see them, as if you have high expectations. That produces the same outcomes without the unhealthy dynamics that "build a relationship" can create.

Are faculty icebreakers a good use of time?

Usually not. Adults with limited time resent activities that feel juvenile or pointless. Icebreakers are deeply uncomfortable for introverts, people with social anxiety, and anyone who'd rather be setting up their classroom. If you must do one, keep it very short and avoid anything that could surface personal trauma. Better yet, give people meaningful collaboration time instead.

Should schools require staff book studies?

I'm pro-reading and always will be. A well-chosen book that's relevant to current work can build shared language and understanding. But making it mandatory without a clear rationale, on top of everything else teachers are already doing, just adds to the overwhelm. We need to get this down to a 40-hour-a-week job before we pile on more requirements.

Should leaders seek validation or wisdom?

Wisdom, always. Validation-seeking is a leadership trap that leads to surrounding yourself with yes-people and never improving. The best leaders actively seek honest feedback, learn from criticism, and recognize that the people who work for them aren't in a position to be fully candid. Social media complaints from teachers aren't just venting -- there are patterns of wisdom in them if you're willing to look.

What technology supports video-based teacher coaching and professional learning?

Video coaching platforms like Sibme are purpose-built for educator professional growth — teachers record lessons, review footage, and engage in asynchronous coaching conversations with timestamped feedback. Unlike general-purpose video tools, Sibme is built around coaching workflows: goal-setting, structured observation, AI-generated observation reports, and a growing library of a teacher's own practice over time.

The asynchronous format removes the biggest barrier to professional learning — scheduling. Coaches and teachers don't need to carve out simultaneous time, which means feedback can happen more frequently and be more closely tied to actual classroom moments.

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