Why You Need to Reconsider How You're Presenting Professional Development

The research on the current state of professional development (PD) is terrifying… 

• According to Learning Forward, 50% of all teachers leave within five years.  

• Teachers Know Best describes that each year in the US alone, approximately $18 billion is spent on professional development - yet 71% of teachers are dissatisfied with the PD offered.

• <50% of teachers receive any type of coaching

Educators are leaving the classroom at an alarming rate.  

In fact, approximately 150,000 teachers leave the classroom each year as a direct result of a lack of meaningful and relevant growth opportunities.

In the largest 50 school districts in the US, an average of $18,000 is spent on each teacher each year in professional development.  

According to the same Teachers Know Best research, teachers describe ideal professional learning experience as:

• Relevant and personalized

• Interactive

• Delivered by someone who understands their experience

• Sustained over time

• Treats teachers like professionals

• Focused on applying learning through demonstrations or modeling and practice

The problem is most coaching isn’t any of the above bullets, let alone all: relevant and personalized, interactive, delivered by someone who understands their experience, sustained over time, treats teachers like professionals, or focused on application.  

Here at iAspire, we empathize with teachers who describe their ideal professional development yet experience otherwise.  We also empathize with those offering professional development and understand how difficult it is to provide personalized and interactive coaching to all of your teachers.  

We realize that most current professional development offerings simply aren’t working, and we’re here to change that.

iAspire created an Intelligent Assistant to offer individualized and relevant coaching experiences to your teachers.  To offer this coaching, teachers create growth plans (which the Assistant helps them create, so no extra work for you!) and are able to opt-in to specific coaching that is delivered through micro-learning experiences.  

Observers (principals and coaches for example) are also able to offer coaching based on classroom observations and walkthroughs.  

The offered instructional coaching is

• relevant and personalized based on teacher growth goals and/or feedback from the observer;

• interactive through the use of micro-learning experiences;

• created and curated by the iAspire team of former educators, administrators, and coaches;

• sustained over time through top-of-mind coaching and reinforcements throughout the year;

• has specific activities and opportunities to invite colleagues into the coaching;

• will actually treat your teachers as the professionals they are.

Let’s finally make a change to how we offer professional development and do what our teachers are desperately needing.  To experience what this looks like in action, click here to try embedded coaching with no commitment.