A GESTÃO PEDAGÓGICA

Artigo Gestão Pedagógica

Why ongoing teacher development must (also) happen inside the school
It is not a secret for anyone that professionals in any given area must keep on learning and recycling their knowledge if they want to get ahead and, I must say, even to preserve their jobs. We try to balance our personal and professional lives and, as well, we have to account for our professional development. Time is precious and not bit of it can be wasted.
Having said that, as coordinators and managers in language schools, we expect our language teachers to pursue their own development by themselves. After all, they are the ones who should be the most interested in keeping their jobs, right? Well, not really.
The fact of the matter is that teacher development should be something the school is directly involved with and we should include it in the scope of our job, as part of the culture of our school. This means that part of teacher development must be the responsibility of the school, and not only the teacher’s. The reason for the importance of creating an environment of constant and active learning among teachers is obvious: both the school and the students will be granted with the benefits of having good, well-prepared, reflective teachers; the school environment improves when you have professionals whose self-confidence is boosted by the fact that the school is investing in them and, therefore, they matter. When the school has good teachers, students stay and the business thrives. Businesses that thrive pay their staff better wages, and their staff is more likely to stick around for longer. It is a virtuous cycle.
Of course, there are many challenges for schools that decide to invest in in-service development: time is probably the biggest of them if we consider how difficult it can be to juggle different schedules, so that everyone can be available at the same time as often as possible. The other possible constraint is catering for different needs: teachers have different profiles and you may have a heterogeneous team in terms of where they are at in their professional development.
Even though promoting professional development within the school can pose a few challenges, the benefits it brings make up for the hard work. Perhaps one of the main advantages is that it contributes greatly to solid team building. Teachers studying together, working together in order to deal with issues and challenges particular to their environment are more likely to build a relationship based on trust and collaboration. As coordinators, we must work towards the consolidation of our team, as well as on their excellence. And we should not expect that to happen by itself. We must lead the way.

Juliana Tavares has been working with ELT for 19 years. She is a co-founder at Teach-in Education and currently works with teacher development, ELT materials writing, and language teaching consulting both in mainstream and language schools. She also writes for Teach-in Education Website and Blog da Teach-in. You can contact her at [e-mail]

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