Miz Mercer's Microblog

Art Gelwicks twittered this:

Singapore govt pays for 100 hours of pro dev per teacher per year.

and I responded with this:

@artgelwicks: what about teachers who don’t like doing PD? You run across those?

and led to a whole back and forth about whether teacher should have to do PD.

I’ve seen a number of different PD models in my life and the life of my family members…

1. The kind your required to do to maintain a professional license, but your employer usually pays for it (doctors and lawyers have this one) 

2. The kind your required to do to maintain a professional license, but your employer usually does not pay for it (one blog post I did said their relatives who were CPAs had this one, but if they work for a corporation, they likely could get it paid for, the bank I used to work for would do this).

3. The kind you are required to do but your employer pays for (this would be my job because the state no longer requires PD for renewal, since many districts require it as part of contract — you’re paid for it in your salary, and the incentives for getting more units — moving up on the pay scale are great).

4. The kind you are not required to do, but incentivized for doing, and pay for yourself. (see #3) 

5. The kind that you are required to do, but are given during your regular work hours (all I ever did when I worked at a bank)

6. The kind that you are required to do, but are done after work hours (never had to do this working at a large, very cheap bank, but Art Gelwicks has, and my dh does this working at a non-profit).

7. Like #4,but the incentive is not necessarily direct (could be better reputation/image).

I’m going to lob the ball back to Art, to ask him to list reasons teachers should do PD. I’m then happy to discuss what I think good PD is, and why Art is right. 

the man himself… mr homer j simpson! on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

My students have interesting opinions about Homer as a dad. 

Cause one of my students repsonded to a redirection with, “You ain’t my momma!” Alice Mercer

Last week, I discussed my students using cut ‘n paste to plagerize their way through blog comments that I assign. I broke it down this week. I show them how to cut ‘n paste a section of wikipedia, then to go through and find the sentence they understood, and rewrite them in their own words, and delete what they didn’t understand to read, comprehend, and show what they understood. It wasn’t perfect, but I’m seeing it click for some of the kids.