Here’s the big mind shift I had as someone who led professional development. I needed to stop giving information and start solving problems.

I realized, far too late, that teachers do not need more information. They don’t need more ideas. They certainly don’t need another framework!

And, yet, that’s all I gave them during professional development: more, more, more.

But teachers are already overwhelmed. They actually need less. In fact, they desperately need less!

Just Feed Them!

Here’s the analogy I come back to:

If someone is starving, you don’t give them a book of recipes. You give them a fully-cooked meal.

A book of recipes leaves all the work in their hands. So it won’t get used. (I have a whole collection of beautiful cookbooks collecting dust on a shelf.)

But a fully-cooked meal just solves the problem!

Likewise, more information and more ideas (and yet another framework) will leave more work on teachers’ plates. They will have to figure out how to implement it all. And teachers just don’t have time. So they won’t do it. And the PD time was wasted.

Start With The Problem

So, how can your next PD solve a problem rather than add more work?

Well, start by identifying the biggest problem! Pick one you are uniquely good at solving.

I realized that teachers don’t want lesson “ideas.” They need actual lessons! And I’ve always loved designing lessons – most teachers have zero interest in this, by the way. Seriously, only 8% of my audience says they want to write their own lessons.

So! With Byrdseed.TV, I stopped explaining how to write differentiated lessons and just started writing the darn lessons! And teachers love it.

It seems incredibly obvious in hindsight!

So, what problem will your next PD solve?