"People may forget what you said or did, but they'll never forget the way you made them feel." In other words, the culture that you set as a facilitator of professional learning is as important as the content you teach. In this chapter we share a number of tools and strategies that we use to cultivate and support a positive culture within our professional development experiences for teachers, and why we do it!
A list of norms can act as a "social contract" that supports a group's collaborative work, avoiding some of the struggles and pitfalls associated with collaboration.
Access practical tools including an activity to help you co-create team norms, a library of example norms, and practical tips. And read the research behind how and why norms can support professional learning.
Icebreakers and energizers are brief activities that can be strategically placed within a learning experience in order to focus participants' attention, raise the energy level in the room, and establish community.
Learn more about what makes these activities so useful, why and how to use them with adult learners, and access activity write-ups for our favorite icebreaker and energizer activities!
Feedback helps you quantify the impact and effectiveness of the professional learning experience. It provides answers to questions like "Did I meet my goals for this session?" or "What do participants want to focus on next time?"
Try out some of the practical and straightforward strategies that we have collected here for gathering and analyzing feedback, and for assessing adult learning.
