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This professional development training session is based on a survey completed by ten elementary teachers from a private school in Montgomery County and a Baltimore City public school in Maryland. I was formerly employed at the school in Montgomery County and had connections at the Baltimore City public school, so I chose to pursue teachers for the survey at these locations. The teachers completed a survey about student engagement with technology in seven areas of emphasis: social, physical, and intellectual engagement, assessment, high-needs students, unconscious bias, and positive reinforcement. The survey objective was to determine and rank the most important topic on student engagement with technology use. Intellectual engagement was the number one topic that became the focus of this training plan and implementation.

The training session was conducted on Zoom on Thursday, November 30 at 4 pm. Only two of the ten teachers were able to be present. A third teacher was planning to attend but had a last-minute conflict. I chose to go forward because I wasn't sure we could find another satisfactory time slot. Please see the professional learning template above for the one-hour schedule outline of training activities.

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I conducted my PD session on Intellectual Engagement for Instruction with the Use of Technology with two teachers from the Baltimore City school. One is a 1st-grade teacher; the other is a 2nd grade teacher. Because of the school demographic, many of their students have below-average Brigance AND DIBELS assessment literacy scores. These students frequently miss school, and the home environment can also impact learning. This PD was exciting because they always attempt to boost their students' intellectual engagement. I started the session by explaining its purpose, i.e., my class, and thanked them for participating. I launched my training session PowerPoint, which guided us through the different sections of the training. I stopped and started it as needed for discussion, observations, and questions.

We reviewed the ISTE standards. This was something new for them. Technology components are built into their lesson plans, but they have never visited the ISTE site and looked at the standards. They could see the framework for the session by reading the standards. We quickly read through the training objective questions. I told them we would get back to them at the end of the session. I launched the video, and as I outlined in my training session plan, we stopped and talked about the three learning theories: behaviorism, cognitive constructivism, and social constructivism and how they can connect to technology use during instruction. We spent a lot of time on this discussion because they had never previously connected the dots of learning theory to technology. It was a robust conversation that helped them rethink how some tech tools could be used differently. Each teacher shared some of their project-based learning activities that promoted intellectual engagement. One of the struggles with this age group is keeping the kids on task. We discussed ways to keep them engaged, such as chunking and role assignments. Once we finished watching the video, we discussed the training objective questions.

The video provided answers to most of them, but the discussion took different directions depending on each teacher's experiences with technology use for instruction. I concluded by having them go to the Padlet website and create one for resources.

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Professional Development Survey for Educators and School Leaders.docx

The evaluation I performed during my professional learning session was informal. Throughout the session, I would ask if the shared information would be relevant to their instruction style, student learning abilities, and the school environment. I was also planning to have them share their Padlets with me to review their notes, additional questions for follow-up, and any possible plans for implementation. However, I would still consider this informal; in retrospect, I realize I should have created a formal assessment tool/s to evaluate the effectiveness of the training session. Subsequently, I created two formal evaluations, which were added to the end of the PowerPoint presentation. One is for review of the session and facilitator, and the other is for growth in learning by the participant. I did email them to the participants as a follow-up. However, the two participants have not yet completed or returned them to me. Thanksgiving break was just around the corner, so I didn't have high expectations for getting them completed and returned any time soon. Neither shared their Padlet link with me, so I could not make any real conclusions based on evaluation data.

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Overall, I think the session went well. If I had to do it again, here are some things I would do differently. Initially, I would have had them create the Padlet at the beginning to use as a capture point for information and resources shared during the session. I adjusted my PowerPoint after the session and moved the Padlet slide up to the beginning. I spent a lot of time on the front-end planning of the professional development training session. However, I did not emphasize the importance of an evaluation process to determine success or follow up to see if implementation could be a reality for them as teachers. I would do that differently and took measures to adjust my content accordingly. I would also apply a chunking concept to my PD and create smaller, more frequent opportunities for discussion. For follow-up, I would check in with them by email to see if they had used some of the strategies presented and also considered learning theory more to individualize learning experiences with technology. I would continue to build a relationship with these teachers to provide support based on the PD. I realized how valuable discussion-based PDs are to teachers continually challenged with meeting the educational needs of a demographically challenged group of students. I learned so much from this exercise. I have a much greater respect for individuals who prepare and facilitate professional development training. This process requires coordination with school leadership, buy-in from potential participants, and a clear plan for evaluation and follow-through for real growth and change.