Requirement of six professional developments

My school has a minimum requirement of six per year. Three of those professional developments are , while the others can be based on different needs. The technology based professional developments are chosen based on guidelines laid out for our district to receive the DODEA grant (we are in a military town). Our curriculum director and admin use the guidelines and the needs of our school at the moment to choose what will be taught at each. We have had PDs based on Google Classroom, Canvas, and other ways to integrate technology into our classrooms.

For the other three PDs, our district sends out a to all staff to see what we are needing in our classrooms. They take that survey and make decisions for what to offer. We had a PD last year where we started out with all staff in the cafeteria for the first half of the day and after lunch, we broke off into classrooms for PDs we had signed up for based on interest and need.

My school does a good job of assessing needs for us when choosing our PDs. For the one last year it was nice to have the option to choose what we needed versus what was mandatory. We had classes on different programs we use and others such as the Trauma Informed Teacher class where we could learn about recognizing our students trauma as a reason for their behavior. Every district will have different needs and PDs should reflect that. As a , we had a many PDs that helped with classroom management and relationship building with students. My admin definitely put a lot of thought into our survey and the needs of our schools, as they should.