Design and lead job-embedded professional learning

The sixth International Teacher Leader standard states, "Design and lead job-embedded professional learning to facilitate improvement in instruction and student learning, aligned to school-wide and team goals."

Designing and implementing practical, thought-provoking professional learning is one of my specialties. As a veteran educator I have sat through far too many "fluffy" theoretical PD with little to no actionable steps. I ensure that whenever I develop PD for staff that they have tools in their tools box that they can begin implementing immediately.

I have frequently collaborated with my wife, Kieko Kanaya, (an expert, highly-experienced, Japanese language B teacher) to develop impactful PD for our schools. Below you will find the link to our PD workshop on using comprehensible inputs to increase student understanding.

We demonstrated two Design mini lessons to staff members and both lessons were completely in Japanese. The first lesson included no comprehensible inputs. The second lesson included as many comprehensible inputs as we could (visual aids, gestures, physical models, use of L1 and translanguaging) etc.

This PD workshop was very successful and the teachers got to step into the shoes of our language learners and experience how satisfying and powerful it is when we all understand.