Re-tooling teacher professional development: The pandemic as a catalyst for change

Normally at this time of the year, our Educator and Leadership Institutes would be in full swing. By the middle of July, we would have completed a full week of training in Nepal, a weekend of intensive leadership training in Haiti, and a week of in-class support for teachers in Egypt. We would have been doing last minute planning for the August ELI in Haiti with 600 teachers and 200 children participating. And this year, we were planning on a week of teacher training in Ethiopia during this very week.

None of these has taken place.

But we have discovered new and innovative ways to engage in teacher and principal professional development.

Our website (www.ELICollaboration.org) is currently being "re-tooled" to include dozens of easily accessible and free resources for educators around the world. We will be informing ELI participants  about these resources in the next few weeks to help them in their individual pursuit of learning.

We have received a small grant to develop a new online course that educators from anywhere in the world can complete. We anticipate having the course up and running before the start of the new school year.

Our Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math (STEAM) camp in Haiti is being re-imagined with the help of our Haitian university student leaders as we hope to provide children in northern Haiti with STEAM activities that they can do without gathering socially.

These are incredibly complex and challenging times. Educators around the world are struggling with what it means to teach in a pandemic. The big question that unites educators globally is: How can we provide opportunities for children to learn in a safe and supportive environment? Traditionally, the physical school environment has provided the structure to allow these opportunities. Take the building out of the equation and the challenges of teaching and learning escalate, particularly in parts of the world that cannot easily, reliably, or cheaply access the Internet. I've written about how the pandemic has exacerbated the educational divide.

But that doesn't have to be the end of the story. I've also written about innovative leadership in challenging contexts such as Haiti. Creative principals and teachers CAN make a difference in the midst of a pandemic, both in local and global contexts.

I've written a lot about "critical incidents" as catalysts for change. We all experience these types of situations that, in hindsight, we see as having changed a particular direction or trajectory in our personal or professional lives.

The pandemic is a critical incident on a scale the world has not seen in many years. For ELI, it has led to some disappointment but it has also served as a catalyst to re-focus on how we can engage in collaborative professional development ... from a distance.