Back-to-school series · Part 2

What to Build During PD (Without Looking Like You’re Not Paying Attention)

Be present for the parts that deserve it. Build during the parts that don’t.

Some professional development is genuinely useful. A real department conversation. A counselor explaining who to send where. A human being telling you something about a student. Be fully present for those, laptop closed.

Then there is the compliance module you have completed nine consecutive Augusts and the slide deck being read aloud. That time is already gone. The question is whether your year gets built during it or during your weekend.

Twenty minutes is the unit

Do not plan to build a whole unit during PD. You will be interrupted. Plan twenty-minute blocks that produce one finished thing: a syllabus draft, one parent email, fifteen bell ringers, or one handout at three reading levels.

Prep the night before

Put these in one folder on the device you will actually use:

• Last year’s syllabus and policies
• Your first-semester text list
• The school calendar with real dates
• Your current essay rubric
• One handout you already use
• Two or three feedback comments that sound like you

Match the build to the session

Compliance and policy sessions

Use the longest predictable block for your syllabus, including the AI-use paragraph.

Technology rollouts

This is your volume-work window: a bell-ringer bank or three reading levels of a core handout. Both survive interruption well.

Data meetings

Build the thing that responds to what you are seeing. If students struggled with evidence, redesign that scaffold or translate your rubric into student language.

Department time

Do not build alone. Draft a common rubric, shared sub plans, or the AI-use policy your department needs to enforce consistently. Edit it together, out loud.

Breakout groups and waiting time

Do the small jobs: your procedures script, a student information form, or the difficult parent email you will need in week three.

Room setup

Use your phone for thinking, not producing. Talk through the pacing calendar and capture it. Clean it up when you sit down.

The half you cannot skip

Everything above produces drafts. Budget real time for the cull. If you generate 45 bell ringers, expect to cut twelve and rewrite eight. If you ask for questions about a novel, expect at least one to reference a scene that is not there.

The honest accounting is six hours for work that used to take twenty. That is a good trade. Anyone promising twenty hours for free is selling something.