• Classroom walk-throughs. When principals do classroom walk-throughs, they eMail specific PD 360 segment links to individual teachers that are relevant to particular instructional needs.
• Group training. Teacher education is often personalized for certain groups, such as when Wilson County high schools chose to customize their PD 360 instruction to the objectives of differentiation and assessment.
• Faculty meetings. Wilson County uses PD 360 in its faculty meetings by watching a segment either before or during the gathering, then breaking into groups and using the Facilitator Guide materials to lead discussions and activities.
• Teachers who are struggling. Teachers experiencing difficulties are helped when principals or PD coordinators eMail specific segment links showing what best practices look like in needed areas. The teachers’ viewing and reflecting can be chronicled in their Professional Growth Plans.
• Teacher growth plans. Teacher PD 360 usage is tracked in Professional Growth Plans as a way to follow specialized goals and teacher development.
Wilson County School System has experienced many benefits while implementing PD 360 and looks forward to many more. For instance, PD 360 gives individualized teacher training that enables each teacher to search for answers to concerns immediately, while still providing a unified focus for the whole system.
Because PD 360 is an online and on-demand solution, Wilson County teachers can access it anytime and anywhere they have the internet. Teacher professional development is now flexible to individual schedules, rather than being limited to the school calendar.
A variety of real classrooms from across the country are shown in every PD 360 program, so that teachers can see how to implement best practices in their own classroom teaching. These best practices are always research-based and classroom-proven, dealing with nearly every education initiative of the past two decades.
Wilson County teachers follow their own growth curve by using the tracking tools and reflection questions at the end of each segment, while administrators use PD 360’s integrated tracking, reporting, and follow-up to ensure that teacher professional development happens consistently.
“Many of our teachers are saying that this is the best professional development they have ever experienced,” Wilson says. “In just six months, we have had great teacher buy-in, with 70 percent usage and approximately 128,000 minutes viewed. Our goal is to attain 100 percent usage within the first month of the next school year.”
For more information about School Improvement Network’s educator effectiveness system, including PD 360, call (855) 808-5868 or visit www.schoolimprovement.com/eschool.
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