Is this the best way of solving education problems?

“When you get teachers in a room together, problems are solved,” says Tennessee high school teacher Jodie Higgs.  Florida Middle school teacher Tiffany Scott adds, “When you get teachers in a room together, miracles happen.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Tiffany and Jodie recently met each other at a networking event that brought teachers together for a couple of days focused on learning, connecting, and leading.  Although the two teachers are from different states, grade levels and subject areas, they share a common desire to solve challenges in their profession and learn from others.

At the convening, Tiffany and Jodie were 30+ teachers who were charged with rethinking professional learning in order to disrupt the “train then teach” cycle.

Tiffany’s team sought to develop a philosophy and set of core values for professional learning.  “We focused on using student work as the driving force behind professional development, with other pieces coming into play within that value,” Tiffany explains.  “We looked to design a structure that was flexible enough to create different routes for professional learning.”

Tiffany’s own experience participating in substantive professional learning helped to inform her group’s conversation. In her Lake County, FL district, Tiffany and a team of teachers have been using Lesson Study to support the implementation of the new standards.  According to Tiffany, “The collaboration helps us look at the standards, break them into skills, develop lessons and look at student work. Student work is at forefront of what we are doing; we continually revisit our practice based on it.”

At the same time, Tiffany was pushed by the design process to think differently.  “What’s interesting about the design process,” says Tiffany, “is that it made me notice that I kept coming back to the structure already in place in my district, instead of thinking outside of the box. We started to talk about teacher networks and how they could be a beneficial professional development structure for teachers.  I hadn’t thought about that before.”

For Jodie, the design process was a way to think about differentiating professional learning for teachers.  As Jodie told our team, “Teacher training all seems to be the same. You come in, sit there and listen.  It may not meet your needs. It may not be interesting.  But you need to do it.  We always talk about differentiation with students but we never do it for teachers. We should have different ways to do professional learning as well.”

Jodie continues, “My group wanted to see how we could come up with different ways to meet teacher needs.  What professional development would really impact teacher learning? It needs to show it values teacher input. We designed a grassroots approach in which a teacher learns something new and then is challenged to bring in two more people.  The idea is to build a network of people interested in working on a certain topic that matters to them.”

Interestingly, both Tiffany and Jodie separately highlight teacher networks as a compelling approach to professional development.  In fact, we are finding that ongoing teacher networks —in person, virtual, or both— are consistently emerging from teachers “getting in a room together.”  The teacher connections often happen organically, driven by teachers and in unexpected ways.  Jodie and Tiffany, for example, never worked together in a design group but bounded through pre-activities at the convening and continue to stay connected.

Teachers designing solutions.  Teachers networking for ongoing learning and support from each other.  Great things happen when teachers are together.

This article is published in collaboration with The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Publication does not imply endorsement of views by the World Economic Forum.

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Author: Vicki Phillips is  the Director, College-Ready Education at The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Image: Coloured pencils are pictured in a wooden box at a nursery school. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle.