We have one more weekend before school officially starts. Tomorrow, Friday, we’re having our Meet the Teacher event where we typically get to meet at least half of our students and parents. I’m excited and a little nervous and trying to decide how to wear my hair for that first impression. My room is ready mostly . . .
Last weekend, I was producing a voiceover workshop with my husband. I can’t help but think that there are parallels to the world of workshops that people pay $400 to attend . . . on a weekend . . . related to their work and to the world of education. For these voice actors, their work is their passion and most of them seem to have a natural talent (although, we’ve been putting on these workshops for five years now and I can tell you that most of them have worked hard to be where they’re at today).
I can imagine going to a weekend conference, I’ve been to several. I even forked out $200 of my own moo-ah to travel to Galveston over the summer to attend a teacher conference. But during the school year, to spend $400 for a weekend conference?! If my district was paying, maybe, right?!
The coach (yes, we call them coaches in the voiceover industry) is the very talented and prolific Dave Fennoy who has voiced roles like Lucius Fox in Batman: Arkham Knight and Lee Everett in The Walking Dead Adventure Game, among a plethora of other roles. Would I spend $400 to see Dave Burgess (the name that pops to mind as a Teaching Rockstar)?! Well, I don’t make a voice actor’s salary (but most of these voice actors aren’t making that salary yet either) and while I know Dave B. is amazing, I’m paying to sit in a room with how many other participants? I know I will take away amazingness, but I have had to pass on several opportunities to do just that.
(***I can’t help but think of the Key and Peele skit -what if we treated educators like we treat sports professionals.)
That’s the fun of the voiceover workshop – it’s with a prolific VO talent who is already coaching one-on-one on a regular basis. At this particular workshop, there were only 15 talent attending the workshop and they each got a significant amount of one-on-one direction and the rest had the benefit of learning from that person’s mistakes and the direction given. We capped attendance at fifteen, so the attendees got as much work as possible. Typically, we only allow ten to attend.
I want to know what this kind of workshop would look like in teacher professional development. Isn’t this what we want to move towards with our students?! Yet, this is not how we train our teachers. Can you imagine having each participant in a teacher workshop prepare a lesson to give and then have this excellent, top-notch educator help us one-on-one to hone our delivery? But then we know everyone in the room is an expert (or close to it), so it’s not just the benefit of one-on-one with the coach, but it’s the benefit of peer review as well! Can you imagine how our lessons would change if instead of just sitting and getting at professional development, we were hands-on doing what it is we’re at training for?!?
We had that opportunity last week when we were training on Project Based Learning. It felt like the bulk of the training was actually us working with our team to flesh out a great first semester project. I just long for more of that kind of time – not end-of-the-day-I’m-worn-out-obligatory-meeting-to-talk-lesson-plans, but the excited how-can-we-add-dynamic-engaging-aspects-to-our-lessons kind of collaboration.
I have the privilege of being part of the tech team at my school this year. There are three of us spanning from Kinder up to 5th. I would love for the bulk of our work to be sitting down with grade-level teams and doing the above – hearing their lesson plans and brainstorming the best ways to include technology – not just me sitting there and telling them about some tool or app. Real, practical, automatic benefits.
This is my plan for my November workshops. I again have the privilege of being chosen to give two workshops at Texas’s annual Science Teacher Conference. They are only an hour long, but I’d like to set up the time as a coaching time, like in the voiceover workshop. Here’s a little background, then BAM, let’s get started preparing an actual Project, or BAM, let’s get started connecting on social media! One workshop is “Project Based Learning in the Elementary Classroom” and the other is “Using Social Media to grow your PLN (Professional Learning Network)”.
I’ll be excited to report next week on how the first week of school went . . .until then!