Professional Development:
Planning a PD Workshop
This page will discuss the training or P.D. that:
- You may be asked to develop for your colleagues
Planning a PD WorkshopIf you’re new on the force and chosen to present, don’t dread it! PD is a time for you to develop yourself by reflecting on your experience so far. This is a good chance to think more deeply about your work and share your ideas with everyone. Prepare yourself way ahead of time, do your homework, have a sense of humor, and make it fun! Here’s my take planning a PD:
After sitting through a few workshops, I decided I wanted to present. There were a few issues that I wanted to be brought up and discussed. I also wanted ALTs to enjoy PD, and I thought I could make this happen. During my first year, I applied to be a Tokyo Orientation assistant, got in to help out, but wasn’t picked as one of the presenters. In my second year of teaching, I was assigned a workshop to present, and I accepted. At Tokyo Orientation, Workshops are 50 minutes... I think. At the Mie mid-year seminar, they are 70 minutes. You’ll be assigned a specific topic. From my experience, the topics are really, just topics that leave room for flexible interpretation. Your JTE is expected to help out, though you will probably plan almost everything. You also get the assistance of a JTE and ALT from another school whose jobs are to facilitate discussion during your presentation. Your purpose is to discuss the topic during a workshop for both JTEs and ALTs from the prefecture. Next, prepare. Here are some suggestions: Prepare & Organize
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Example: My WorkshopMy topic was “Motivation of Students to Learn English.” This workshop focused on discussion instead of skill-training. From the topic, I decided on 2 broad purposes: 1. Discuss student motivation and 2. Exchange ideas on how to improve it.
I began the workshop by discussing the purposes and giving a general idea of what we’ll accomplish. Then teachers had to complete a survey about their opinions on student motivation. Afterwards, I explained that the same questions were given to hundreds of students, with the point of view changed to reflect theirs. Teachers were to follow along with the data I found and compare it to their own survey that they had just completed. Coupled with the activity was an incentive to follow along. If their answers matched with the students, they could earn treats or enter tickets into a lottery for grand prizes. Many of the students’ answers were different from teachers’, so it gave them a few surprises and was interesting to follow along. At the end of the activity, as a surprise, I gave everyone fun-size chocolate for their participation, and they seemed pretty happy. Then we moved on to the more meatier part. My JTE and I explained the expectations again and teachers were divided into groups of 4-6. Each group received a large poster and markers with questions about student motivation. As a group, they were to discuss the questions and write their opinions and suggestions. The posters were then rotated every few minutes. People who contributed to discussion any time could automatically take a lottery ticket from their table and write their name on it. My JTE and ALT facilitators knew what they were supposed to do and did a great job of keeping time and running around to help me. In the end, we regrouped as a whole class. We mostly ran out of time, but I read off of a few posters and expanded on audience comments. Although we ran out of time to look at all the posters as a whole group, I reminded us that the purpose was to discuss this topic in detail, and we did so in our small groups. In the end, we picked up everyone’s lottery tickets, and drew names for prizes: regular-sized chocolate bars. I received some positive feedback on the workshop afterwards, and that felt great! =D I will not upload the powerpoint and data I collected, but I will share the lesson plan I made for this workshop: It’s quite detailed because it was meant for other JTEs and ALT facilitators to follow along. I’d like to share the data presented from my workshop some time in the future, but as a different web page, focused on Japanese students. |