Being a PD “Thought Stretcher”

Play video: CoffeED: Drew Perkins (12 minutes 45 seconds)12:45

A professional development pro questions his way forward

Drew Perkins has a lot of questions. That’s what sets him apart as a “thought stretcher” in the world of education professional development. Instead of telling teachers and administrators how to teach, he tries to turn it around and get them asking questions about how they can get better. When a school inquires about a PD workshop, he likes to ask questions to identify needs they have and then personalize and co-construct a PD program for them.

“What is your mission statement?” Drew will ask, knowing most mission statements are a list of platitudes in a frame on the wall. He then turns that mission statement into a mission question and uses the inquiry process to say, “What do we need to know and be able to do in order to answer that question and achieve that mission? What does that vision look like? What do we want our schools and our districts to look like, sound like, and feel like? And what are the actions that we need to take as leaders, as schools, and as individuals?”

That is what really drives his approach to professional development for individuals, teams, department heads and schools. When they are finished, he comes back and asks, “In what way did that meet and align with that mission and vision? And, if not, why not and do we need to do something differently and/or do we need to revise our mission and vision?”

It is this approach that separates Drew from the crowd and solidifies his position as an innovator and thought leader in the world of professional development.

More on professional development from February 2018

In February 2018, edCircuit writer Jim Reams described Drew Perkins as an example of a professional development leader taking a new approach, and placed that approach beside several other efforts to make professional development more useful.

Steve Dembo, a consultant and professional development expert, told EdTech Magazine that sessions should break away from rows of chairs and a lecture. “There is something very powerful about motion and the impact that it has on the brain,” Steve Dembo said, adding that a conversation held while moving around changes the dynamic.

The University of North Carolina reviewed how it prepares educators to teach reading. UNC President Margaret Spellings said at the time that the system was not doing as good a job as it could to prepare teachers to teach young children literacy, and that better preparation would improve scores.

One district made professional development about STEAM hands-on by having teachers build their favorite fruits from Lego blocks. Sonia Roy, a librarian at Coyote Canyon Elementary School who led a session called “Easy Peasy STEAM in the Primary Classroom,” said teachers are engineers who find ways to solve problems every day: they develop plans to teach the standards and test whether the approach worked.

Jim Reams concluded that educators and administrators should always look for new ways to grow, which Drew Perkins describes as stretching thoughts around new methods of professional development.

Further Reading

1. The Washington Post – Report urges major changes in career education at Maryland school system
2. The Hechinger Report – Three lessons from rigorous research on education technology
3. WRAL – ‘Fighting the status quo’: Inside the combative world of NC’s new public schools chief

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