You cannot discover new oceans unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore”. ~ Unknown
In my last two posts, I talked about how important of a role The Innovator’s Mindset has had on me, but I would be remiss if I led you to believe it’s been the only thing to shape me during the last few years. Two other unique opportunities changed my perspective: The Adobe Trainer-the-Trainer program and the Google Certified Educator and Trainer program.
During the summer of 2017, a few weeks after I started reading The Innovator’s Mindset, I stumbled upon an 8-week online and free Train-the-Trainer program with Adobe Education. When I say stumbled, I mean, literally the day the course started. Typically, I would not have undertaken something like this with so little notice, but this was the first chance to start putting my new innovative mindset to work. So I dived in!
The course ultimately focused on designing professional development opportunities using Adobe’s products. Each week we learned about a new product/tool, how it could be used in curriculum, and best practices in adult learning while finishing up with the basics of lesson design.
Our assignment was to create effective and engaging workshops for teachers based on the product/tool of the week. The assignment would be turned in to be evaluated by our instructors, but before the assignment was counted as completed, we also had to provide feedback to at least 3 others class members. The assignment was added to our learning portfolio which we turned in at the end of the course to be evaluated by our instructors, who would ultimately decide if we had learned the skills necessary to be certified as an Adobe Education Trainer.
I feel this course brought me back to the basics. In regards to professional development strategies, I wasn’t necessarily learning anything new; instead I was re-learning strategies from 10 years earlier, but for one reason or another didn’t always do. Like with most things, after you’ve been doing it a while you get into a rhythm and naturally some things fall away.
I was reminded that designing workshops for teachers isn’t any different from designing lessons for students. There still needs to be an emphasis on objectives and understanding what the end goal is for the learners. Working on the plans for several workshops made me think more thoroughly about how to design the direct instruction, guided practice, and independent practice pieces and how the workshop should flow.
The program runs about once a year through the Adobe Education Exchange, a free site that offers PD, lesson ideas, and a community for all educators. Sign up to get an account and access to hundreds of resources. You can still take the course even if you don’t have access to Adobe products, as you can use the free trial versions of each product for 7 days, which gives you all the time you need to complete that week’s assignment.
A year later, I would start on the path to becoming a Google Certified Educator and then Trainer.
I’ve been using Google since its beginning, starting with Gmail and long before G Suite for Education existed. In 2013, with a previous school district, I coordinated my school’s use of Google Apps for Education (GAFE) as a pilot program with the 8th grade. The next year I switched to my current district that was implementing a 1:1 program with the use of GAFE. I designed a training program on Google products based off of the Google Ninja model for our teachers; think of it as precursor to the Google Teacher Training Center.
Achieving Google certification seemed like the likely next step.
There are four types of certification: Educator Level 1, Educator Level 2, Trainer and Innovator. I knew pretty early on that Innovator would be a long way off for me; it wasn’t my end goal for the moment. I really wanted to be a trainer because that is a large part of my job. To get to this level, I would need to pass both educator level exams first. These two certifications are based on having a working knowledge of all the Google products and knowing how they can be used in a classroom. Trainer, on the other hand, continued to expand on what I had learned through Adobe’s Train-the-Trainer program. Google’s program also focuses heavily on lesson design and techniques for developing and delivering professional development.
Through the Trainer certification, I learned how to provide more choice throughout workshops, providing educators a chance to learn more about what they want to learn during a session. The idea of giving up this much control during a PD was something that a few years ago would have scared me, but I ask teachers to do it all the time with their students, so shouldn’t I be able to do it too?
Before going through this program, I thought allowing choice during a PD meant that teachers could ask about anything relative to the topic at hand; how could I be prepared for every possible question and make sure everyone was on the same wavelength? It turns out, just like with students, you limit the options. This might mean giving your participants a few options as to what needs to be taught and allowing them to create the agenda based on which options are more important to them. Or it could be asking “which of these two skills would you like to learn about today?” Or would you like to learn as a whole group or work as small groups?
It made me much more confident and less stressed while facilitating. I didn’t have to know every possible answer and I could be prepared to know where those options may take us. As with the classroom, anything can happen, so being flexible and adaptable is still key!
I also learned more about following up after a PD session, something I am not that good at. I have worked really hard to not provide only “one and done” training sessions, contacting teachers after a session to see if they need more support and developing additional, deeper sessions after the first initial one.
Like I said in this post and in this other post, reading The Innovator’s Mindset opened the door for me to stop feeling like an imposter as a teacher and guided me to find those great teachers who would elevate me. The book would plant the seeds that led me to both the Train-the-Trainer and the Google certification programs; great experiences that put me on a much stronger path. I would highly recommend either one of these programs to any teacher, whether you present on professional development or are looking to build your skills in the classroom. It will make you slow down and think about the structure and flow of your lesson design, which in the end can only benefit all learners.
Ms Priester EDU 