Giving Compass' Take:

• Edutopia gives tips for teachers and educators looking to advance their professional development: Tackle what you don’t know — and leverage what you do.

• How could these principles apply to other jobs and nonprofit roles? We should always approach acquiring new skills with a learning mindset.

• Here's more on why teacher professional development needs to be personalized.


Although I’m a former high school English teacher who now works to prepare new teachers for the secondary classroom, I had a stint early in my career as a sixth-grade science and math teacher at a startup charter school. I loved the science lessons and preparing, taking the students through lessons on inquiry, experimentation, and hypothesis. But preparing math lessons? Not so much. I remember fretting over those lessons, and if I’m honest, the science lessons received more classroom time than the math ones.

If I could only go back all those years to when I was young and just emerging in my craft (and in my understanding of myself), I would dive headfirst into bettering my skills and strategies for teaching sixth graders math.

What I now know about the fear in not feeling comfortable teaching something is to go toward it rather than move away from it.

  1. First, admit what you don’t know.
  2. Use what you do know.
  3. Observe colleagues.
  4. Make sure you understand what you’re teaching before you teach it.
  5. Actively seek professional development.
  6. Keep moving toward, not away from, what you don’t know.

Perhaps you’ve been teaching third grade at the same school for 10 years? Most likely there’s somewhere in your practice you feel vulnerable. Move toward that place and dive in. And if there’s a novice at your school, someone you know who is experiencing a lot of uncertainty and vulnerability, reach out as soon as you have a moment and offer guidance and support.

Read the full article about teacher professional development and admitting what we don't know by Rebecca Alber at Edutopia.