District Needs

Located in rural New Mexico, Artesia Public Schools serves a diverse student population of 3,500 at nine schools. Like many districts, Artesia struggled with providing consistent, effective professional development, and at the same time staying within the shrinking budgets. After a professional development activity, it was difficult to provide ongoing follow-up and document if any change had occurred in the classroom.

“One of the top four things that changes student achievement is the type of professional development teachers receive. After a training session with an expert, I would see a major impact for a couple of days. But before long, teachers would go back to doing things the way they have always done,” said Rick Stewart, Director of Federal Programs at Artesia Public Schools.

Stewart and other leaders at Artesia recognized the need to provide high-quality professional development to the district’s 200 teachers consistently and with increased accountability.

“We needed to find a unified, ongoing plan that would meet the needs of everyone from a kindergarten teacher to an AP senior English teacher. Our goal was to provide our teachers with access to relevant resources whenever they need it,” said Stewart.

Solution

One day Stewart was flipping through a magazine when he saw an ad for PD 360. Curious about the promise of on-demand, individualized learning for every teacher, he called the School Improvement Network and received a thirty-day trial license.

“Every district leader and principal wants to provide great professional development to teachers. The obstacles are always time and budget. We decided to purchase PD 360 because it offered everything we needed and helped us overcome these barriers,” said Stewart.

PD 360 is the leading on-demand professional learning resource for schools and districts with over 225,000 subscribers across North America. With over 110 hours of research-based video content, teachers, administrators, professional learning communities, coaches, and mentors have available at their fingertips hundreds of indexed and searchable video segments that present real, best-practice classroom examples and feature respected education experts, such as Michael Fullan, Rick DuFour, Doug Reeves, Rick Stiggins, and many others. Educators can instantly find the help they need on nearly every topic, including differentiation, assessment, English language learners, leadership, and more. PD 360 bridges the gap between training and classroom implementation with job-embedded follow-up, tracking, and reflection tools.

As a former principal, Stewart knew that he had to get buy-in from the district’s principals to make the implementation of PD 360 successful. The School Improvement Network provided a training seminar for principals soon after Artesia purchased, which helped give the principals a sense of ownership over implementation in their school.

To get the principals even more involved in PD 360, Stewart made them responsible for training sessions at the district’s professional development kickoff before the 2007-2008 school year. Typically, the district hired an outside consultant for the kickoff, but with PD 360, principals were able to easily prepare a variety of training sessions around specific topics, like English language learners and differentiated instruction.

“Every principal saw something different in PD 360. Having the principals prepare training sessions for the beginning-of-the-year in-service showed our teachers that their principals did understand the challenges they faced and were qualified instructors,” said Stewart.

Following the principal breakout sessions, Stewart held a three hour seminar to show teachers how to use PD 360. During the 2007-2008 school year, both Stewart and school principals worked hard to integrate PD 360 into every teacher’s professional development activities. Newer teachers were assigned specific segments to watch around topics like classroom management and lesson planning. More experienced teachers were given the flexibility to pick several video segments that addressed their specific needs.

During the 2008-2009 school year, use of PD 360 will become increasingly more site-based. Principals will be able to determine which segments most effectively address their school’s needs and plan group professional development around those segments. Teachers will continue to be able to find video segments that meet their
individual questions and needs.

Benefits

After its first year of use, Artesia has experienced many important benefits as a result of their careful implementation of PD 360. Said Stewart, “PD 360 has made Artesia’s professional development program much more convenient and effective. The variety of resources within PD 360 enhance all our professional development activities and give us a way to meet the individual needs of every teacher.”

• Meeting No Child Left Behind Requirements

Artesia has one school, Artesia Junior High School, currently in corrective action under the demands of No Child Left Behind. During the 2007-2008 school year, Artesia Junior High used PD 360 to ensure every teacher received professional development on at least a weekly basis. When the New Mexico Department of Education visited to perform its evaluation, they were amazed that the school actually had something in place to help every teacher improve because this element of corrective action usually presents a major challenge. The state department cited PD 360 in their evaluation as a way schools can improve and offer ongoing training to teachers.

“PD 360 is the perfect way to show that teachers and administrators are trying to get better,” said Stewart.

 • Saving Money

PD 360 has been very cost-effective for Artesia. By not having to hire an outside consultant for their 2007- 2008 in-service, Artesia actually paid for its first year PD 360 subscription. Since the district used Title I funds to purchase PD 360, the budgets of individual principals were actually freed up because they did not have to spend such a large portion of their resources on professional development. “We do not send staff members to conferences and seminars unless they have exhausted the resources in PD 360. Not only has the reduction in travel costs saved us money, but we have actually gained instructional time. The less teachers have to leave the classroom, the better for the students,” said Stewart.

• Increasing Consistency

A major challenge of professional development is ensuring it happens consistently, especially with limited time. Several schools in Artesia have set aside one hour each week for professional development. PD 360 makes these weekly sessions much easier by providing a vast library of video segments that act as a catalyst for discussion.

• Meeting Every Teacher’s Needs

Teachers can access PD 360 anytime and from any location, which means they no longer have to wait for a training session to get answers to questions. Instead of searching the Internet for help and coming up with unsubstantiated sources, teachers can search PD 360 to find research-based resources that meet their needs. “The content of PD 360 includes segments for all our teachers. When teachers can actually see a new strategy modeled on film, they understand it and feel much more comfortable implementing it in their own classroom,” said Stewart. “Our teachers have logged over 18,000 minutes on PD 360 during our first year.”

• Improving Instructional Leadership

Principals have especially benefited from PD 360. Like many districts, Artesia principals are responsible for most of their teachers’ professional development, and PD 360 helps make site-based training much more effective. Using PD 360’s digitized facilitator guides, principals are able to prepare group sessions around specific video segments. Because all video segments and facilitator guides are research-based, principals can
provide their staff with high-quality training even if they themselves are not experts on the given topic. Several principals are also using PD 360 after walkthroughs to send emails to teachers with relevant video segments. PD 360 has also given principals a way to work with struggling teachers. Being able to quickly provide immediate remediation on many issues has been helpful to both principals and teachers alike.

• Increasing Accountability

Before PD 360, it was nearly impossible for Artesia leaders to determine how much professional development happened and more importantly, if it had any effect. Now they can track all professional development activities to ensure all teachers are participating on a regular basis. Using PD 360’s integrated follow-up and reflection tools, leaders can help ensure that professional development is implemented in the classroom. “Over the past year, 100 percent of Artesia’s staff has engaged in PD 360, and we are much farther along in our professional development program than we ever would have been without PD 360. PD 360 allows the district to set a unified focus for schools while still providing each teacher with the differentiated support they need,” said Stewart.