I’ve been looking through my archives as a result of redesigning my blog over the weekend and saw a few posts about different flavours-of-the-month from years past. What I wrote in one post about PLCs (remember them?) from 2007 still resonates in me today but as I was link-checking to make sure the links still worked I was confronted with the fact that most of them did not.*

And I realized just how very real this phenomenon of flavour-of-the-month PD actually is.

They are all the rage – one year it is PLC, the next differentiation (or did that one come first?), then it’s integrating technology, then it’s 1:1 laptop, then project-based learning, then layered curriculum, then tablets, then learning styles (I hope we’re past that one for good), then..then…then…

People talk about it to death, rail on those who aren’t talking about it to death, then slowly move on to the next red-hot PD delicacy….and pretty soon the links get broken and teachers are expected to pick up the pieces, shake themselves off, and move on to the next flavour-of-the-month.

Is this what PD is all about? Am I misguided in hoping for and working towards professional development that is as meaningful to teachers as we want our classrooms and learning situations to be for our students?

Let me remain misguided.

*(I’ve updated the links where I could. Here is the article that inspired this little tirade of mine –> Professional Learning Communities, from February 2007).