The PD Book compiles everything the authors know about designing and facilitating professional development and have categorized that knowledge into eight habits (and eight chapters). The book will offer you habits and behaviors to emphasize the actions that you can take. Readers will also explore the beliefs and ways of being that are below the behaviors the authors encourage a reader to take, while focusing on the behaviors the authors would hope to see if they observed the reader delivering a PD session after reading this book. Readers will also discover how to make decisions when designing and delivering PD that not only navigate inequities, but that create equitable spaces.

The book includes stories, insider tips and tricks, and a reflection activity at the end of each chapter.

ELENA AGUILAR is Founderand President of Bright Morning Consulting, an international education, coaching, and consulting firm that offers new learning practices to organizations that aspire to build resilient communities and a just and equitable world. She has twenty years’ experience as a classroom teacher and instructional and leadership coach.

LORI COHEN has over twenty years’ experience working in public and independent schools as a classroom teacher, instructional coach, administrator, and workshop facilitator. She designs practical and portable learning experiences and facilitates sessions with a strong infusion of humor and heart.

About the Authors

Acknowledgements

Introduction

• Pulling Back the Curtain

• Defining Professional Development

• What Is in This Book

• Who You Are and Who We Are

• What if PD Could Be More Like a Party?

Chapter 1: Determine Purpose

• Dismantling PD Apathy

• Purpose: The Foundation for Transformational Learning

• Create Purposeful Plans

• Communicate: Make the Learning Matter

• Putting It All Together

• Assessing Impact

Chapter 2: Engage Emotions

• What you Need to Know about Emotions to Deliver Transformative PD

• Grumpiness, Pet Peeves and Triggers

• Creating Psychological Safety

• Mitigating Dominant Culture: Creating Safe-ish Spaces

Chapter 3: Navigate Power

• Sources of Power

• Leveraging Power

• The Impact of Power

• Possibilities for Navigating Power

• How to Dissolve Resistance

• Start and End with Relationships

Chapter 4: Anchor in Adult Learning

• You Can’t Make People Learn

• Adult Learning Theory 101

• Adult Learning in the Virtual World

• You Can Create The Conditions For Learning

Chapter 5: Design Intentionally

• Tools for Intentional Design

• A Process for Intentional Design

• Mitigate the Dominant Culture in Design

Chapter 6: Attend to the Details

• Details Matter to Learning

• Long-term Planning: Get Ready

• Short-term Planning: Finalize the Details

• The Day of: Go Time

• Post-Event: Leave Things Better than You Found Them

Chapter 7: Facilitate Adaptively

• Detours Happen

• When Harm Happens

• The Roots of Adaptive Facilitation: Know Yourself

• Becoming an Adaptive Facilitator: Skill Sets to Refine

• Addressing PD Detours

• Reimagining What’s Possible

Conclusion

Appendix A: The Core Emotions

Appendix B: Nonviolent Communication Needs

Appendix C: What-Why-How Agenda Template

Appendix D: Structures for Virtual Learning

Appendix E: Checklist for Attending to Details

Appendix F: Resources for Further Learning

Glossary

References

Index