Jeff,
What a wonderful opportunity!
My recommendation: If you actually have the opportunity (and resources) to change the culture of PD in the school, don’t do more of the same. Instead, think about how to do sustained teacher learning within your environment, rather than sending teachers out to one-offs that they “bring back†— or don’t — to their colleagues. Even if they are learn a lot, and are sincere about bringing that back and sharing it with their colleagues, the obstacles to implementing substantive change are just too large.
That’s the big takeaway from the folks who study effective PD: it should be sustained, ongoing and intensive; it ideally should be on-site rather than off-site; it should develop a community of teachers learning with and from each other, and working on a subject of shared concern.
The resources, then, go towards release time (as they would, in paying for workshops or conferences) and facilitators, not conference fees and travel. It’s not that conferences are never valuable. (I’ve even run some myself!) But as a strategy for school change and faculty growth, distributing funds for a series of one-offs may not be the best way to go.
Jon A. Levisohn
Brandeis University
