Last Friday I had a Pro-D, Professional Development Day, with the Inquiry Hub staff. We started the morning with a book talk, sharing what we have learned from books we are reading.
A few weeks ago, I had my teachers fill out a form sharing the title and link to a book that they wanted to read for their own personal development. I said that it didn’t have to be education-related, just something they wanted to learn from. Even though I said no obligation for follow up, my iHub staff suggested the book talk as part of their Pro-D day.

We don't all have our books with us, but today's Pro-D Day started with us sharing what we've learned in books we've read for our own professional growth. pic.twitter.com/JvV4Kn9blh

— Inquiry Hub (@InquiryHub) May 21, 2021

I loved hearing all the ideas and educational connections they made to the books they were reading.

Next, we moved on to personal learning time. We each shared what we were exploring, planning, or investigating, and then had an hour and a half to work on it. For example, two teachers worked on updating a questionnaire we give students when the apply to the school. Another teacher worked on a unit in one of his courses he thought needed work, and another teacher created a ‘Diversify your feed’ document and shared it with our staff and students:

This is awesome ⁦@MlleSoYu⁩ pic.twitter.com/LVN3Cv2C61

— Inquiry Hub (@InquiryHub) May 21, 2021

I decided to create this image using information our team developed at our previous Pro-D. My way of making sense of our vision for the school:

Combining Jim Collins (@level5leaders) Hedgehog and Flywheel, as we look ahead to the learning community we are trying to develop and foster @InquiryHub.
(Some spelling errors corrected after the video:) pic.twitter.com/223l97rQ25

— Inquiry Hub (@InquiryHub) May 21, 2021

We got together again (digitally, we weren’t meeting face-to-face) after lunch to share what we’d done, then we did some group planning around our timetable next year… a real challenge in a small school with a small staff that offers so many options for students.

Most of our day was about choice. Teachers got to share learning from a book of their choice, then they got to choose what they wanted to work on, before getting together for collaboration time. We spend a lot of our day at Inquiry Hub giving students time to work on things they want and need to work on. Our students have a lot of self-directed time at our school. It only seems fitting that when it’s time for our staff to learn, that we do the same.

Even though teachers got to choose what book they learned from (it didn’t have to be the one I gave them, although that seemed to be the one they mostly shared from), they were able to be really diverse in their sharing. Even though there were no constraints on what their personal learning time was used for, we shared our intentions before splitting up to spend that time on our own, or together by choice. We had accountability built into the day, but it was filled with personal choice.

It’s not just our students who benefit from choice in learning, our teachers benefit greatly too!