Propel Professional Learning

Professional Learning Book Club: A reflection on a new practice Thoughts on Professional Learning By Nadia Kader Our book club formed when a desire to explore different modalities of professional learning(PL) merged with a desire for extended PL with our staff. At Propel, we continually explore new opportunities to design and develop PL. As times change and budgets shrink, we recognize the need for more PL that is not centered on in-person conferences or institutes. Propel coordinators are exploring asynchronous and hybrid formats for our offerings. Additionally, we are exploring how programs can conduct their own in-house PL. An organization can enhance interpersonal relationships, identify shared goals, and work towards program improvement through collaborative PL. We tested this idea out by running a PL book club with Propel staff.  Book club creation and first steps The coordinator team has done a lot of self-directed PL on our own time, which includes reading books and applyin...

  Considerations when transitioning to online instruction By Nadia Kader There is a need and interest in transitioning to online instruction in adult education. While having informal conversations with practitioners, I noted how quickly people wanted to jump to online instruction without considering how much an impromptu move changes practice, affects staff and students, and what learning gaps there are. We are a resource-starved field serving students with high support needs and competing responsibilities, such as family, work, and personal. It is incredibly challenging to plan ahead of time when there are fires to put out, staff to hire, reports to submit, and grants to write. However, if we can plan and take into consideration how challenging online teaching and learning can be, we can mitigate issues before they become too big to handle. A better understanding of the problems at hand helps us solve them in the long run. We can also better support each other in building a learni...