Need help figuring out how to create an online professional development experience for your staff or network? We can help—starting with establishing your case for investing in online professional development now.

If you need to communicate with your board, funders or partners that now is the time to invest in online professional development or that the funds currently tagged for programming (that isn’t occurring) should be reallocated to online PD, copy and paste today’s post into your own document to get started.

And when you’re ready to work on crafting your professional development strategy, contact us. We can help you figure it out.

Our Case for Online Professional development

Strengthening Our Staff Strengthens Our Programming

The COVID-19 global pandemic has prevented our organization from serving youth and families as we normally would. While schools are shut down, many youth-serving organizations have also closed their doors, suspending services and furloughing staff. Our organization is grateful to be operating, and this uncertain time has provided us with an opportunity to focus inward to strengthen the core of our organization: our staff.

We take great pride in our incredible staff. And we know that positive staff-youth relationships are essential to high-quality programming. When staff receive effective professional development, they are more successful at engaging students and building supportive relationships that lead to positive social emotional learning (Moroney, 2017) and that sets the foundation for future student success. During the typical program year, we often do not have as much time or resources to dedicate to staff development as we would like. However, the crisis has provided our organization with the gifts of time and space to build up our home team.

Supporting Our Team Now and in the Future with Online Professional Development

High-quality online professional development can provide our team with ongoing experiences that build their knowledge and skills both now and in the future. Over the next few months, we will implement an online professional development strategy that supports our staff on both personal and professional levels. Our PD will engage staff in meaningful learning experiences that mirror and model the type of learning engagement we want staff to have with youth. Staff will be empowered to:

• (Re)connect to our organization’s vision and approach to learning

• Reflect on their own behaviors and beliefs 

• Engage in independent, self-paced learning

• Engage in facilitated, group learning

• Allow their personal learning experiences and reflections to inform how they work with young people and with each other

Underpinning our PD strategy is our full intent to share hope, resilience, creativity and responsiveness with staff—the same capacities we want them to develop with the youth they serve. To achieve these goals, we will develop a curated online learning experience that draws from existing content, supports staff personally and embodies our organization’s vision.

Bibliography

Ahmad, A. (March 27, 2020). Why you should ignore all that coronavirus-inspired productivity pressure. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Online: https://www.chronicle.com/article/Why-You-Should-Ignore-All-That/248366/.

Brasili, A. and Allen, S. (2019). Beyond the webinar: dynamic online STEM professional development. Afterschool Matters, Spring 2019. http://naaweb.org/images/Brasili-and-Allen-ASM-Spring19.pdf

Development Without Limits. (August 21, 2019). Why offer professional development online? https://www.developmentwithoutlimits.org/news/staff-development-online

Moroney, D. (2017). Developing a high-quality staff. In National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2017. Approaches to the Development of Character: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/24684.