WHY THE NEED FOR A TEACHER-LED PRO D CENTRE

Documented by SALLY SIRIRAM, First Vice President,
Source: The National Foundation For The Improvement of Education, Summer2000 No2

FOR some time now, TTUTA has been talking about the building of two Teachers Centres, one each in Trinidad and Tobago. The land in Tobago already belongs to the Association and the land in Trinidad ought to be procured shortly. Now that the Association is beginning to reflect a healthier financial picture, TTUTA’s extended vision is to have these plans transformed into reality. It is unfortunate that some of our own teachers fail to recognise the true value and nature of a teachers’ centre. Some view it as just a building where teachers, who have nothing else to do, gather there to play cards, shoot some pool and create cliquism. In short, some teachers brandish a teachers’ centre as a club house for a chosen few. We must disabuse our minds of such thoughts.

CENTERING THE TEACHING PROFESSION

We can first begin by talking in terms of a ”teacher-led professional development centre”. Teachers are eager to learn, and teachers’ associations are increasingly using traditional union skills and activities to build the infrastructure for greater teacher professionalism and success in the classroom. Our teachers are innovative, take risks, and are agents of change to improve teaching and learning in our schools. Teachers’ professional development is a cornerstone of reforms that heighten student achievement. Our Association helps teachers to take responsibility for the quality of the profession, and can play a leadership role in the development of research and policy affecting public education, and acquire skills, knowledge and experience in ways that can contribute to student success.

Professional development centres can help to focus these activities and provide opportunities to set long-range goals and visions for the profession. Such a centre can harness all these potentials under one roof and thus be a dynamic force in the direction of our education system. Such centres can provide the long-term stability needed to allow the profession to flourish. The establishment of these important resources is not just for a few teachers or a few schools. It is work that must extend to all.

The professional development centre can be the organising principle around which seemingly diverse pieces of work to transform teaching, are carried out.

Some of these pieces include:

• Support for new teachers to ensure success during the first few years in the profession;
• Opportunities to discuss standards and assessments for student learning;
• Development and adoption of innovations in practice;
• Curriculum development;
• Leadership development;
• Peer assistance;
• Deepening and renewing subject-specific knowledge;
• Assistance with pursuing higher qualifications;
• Teacher research.

  These are imperative for teachers’ professional development and are the responsibility of the profession itself. In order to realise a new vision of teaching, the profession must convene the partners and resource providers necessary to provide such development. However, TTUTA can draw on the characteristics of successful centers and push ahead in new areas. The centre should be more inclusive than exclusive, and serve principals and paraprofessional and teachers as well. It is possible that our centres could organise a wide variety of activities carried out by a partnership whose goal is the continuous improvement of instruction leading to gains in student achievement.

  Our centres, therefore, should:

• Serve as a haven for individual and collective risk-taking;
• Involve all our teachers and those in the business of education;
• Make use of the leadership skills that teachers acquire at various stages in their career;
• Build bridges between what is mandated, what teachers and administrators say they need, and what is the best practice;
• Generate work that leads to better policies and help legislatures to frame productive, research-based mandates;
• Link the learning in one school to another;
• Serve as a clearinghouse for high-quality professional development;
• Focus on standards for student learning;
• Provide a long-term focus on changes in knowledge and practice, with follow-up in school sites;
• Build effective school teams, inclusive of the principal;
• Transform the principal into the chief instructional leader;
• Be established external to the state education bureaucracy;
• Rise above politics but be able to use the union’s power to achieve professional goals. As we are about to start the construction of our teachers’ centers, we need to:
• Establish the Vision;
• Find the Right Partners;
• Develop the Plan;
• Get started by asking ourselves questions that reflect a commitment to getting it right;
• Be conscious of building access for all;
• Identify ways of sustaining the centre;

  Unless the professional development centre has the appropriate structure, partners and governance system, it will become yet another addition to the bureaucracy. Deep backing and support from TTUTA will be critical to its success. It must be an integral part of union activity just like our efforts around salaries, security and working conditions. The centres should be a source of Research and Development for the profession. Along the route to this goal, the centers could be designed as the advocate and facilitator of training. The centres could also be a valuable source for documenting the link between high-quality professional development and student results, gathering data to disseminate to schools, legislators and other stakeholders in education. Professional development centres themselves should be sources of new ideas – places that help to set the policy agenda based on research and best practice rather than vassals of Board or State mandates. Our Association is committed to having our centres as models for teacher-led professional development centres. Let us turn our vision for the teachers’ centres into a reality.