Teacher Tip#8: Engage in Professional Development

Your first year of teaching is mostly about survival. How to manage discipline problems, getting to know your colleagues, school, and administration, and learning to find a balance between grading all those assignments and enjoying your personal life outside of teaching.

Of course, one of the things that's great about our profession is that there are many opportunities to participate in activities that will invigorate our teaching methodology, especially if we're veteran teachers.

Teacher Tip#8: Engage in worthwhile professional development.

I add the word worthwhile because not all professional development activities are worth your while. Some are redundant, some turn into gripe-fests, and some are just inappropriate to the subject or grade level you teach.

However, do a little research and find out from your colleagues in your school what recommendations they have for professional development. Some times there's a teacher in your area that's really good and will give you some good, expert advice and suggestions that will be well worth your time.

I am currently working on my gifted endorsement and by chance I stumbled onto a great teacher. I participated in an intense seven day workshop from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Pretty intense seeing as I teach high school and am used to be out by 2:30 p.m.

However, this professional development was well worth my time. One of the things that I learned from it was this video called 2 Million Minutes: A Documentary Calculating the Educational Divide. It is such a fascinating comparison of American, Chinese, and Indian students. You have got to see this video if you are an educator. It will definitely open up the discussion as to what our students are like compared to students from other countries. If anything, it'll open up a lot of discussion between you and your colleagues, and though we can't immediately change everything about our profession what we feel needs help, ask yourself what's the one thing you can do in your classroom to improve the education you're providing your students.