3 Fresh Ideas for Structuring Professional Development

Listen to the interview with Jenn White and Josh Kurzweil (transcript):

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Schools and districts allocate a lot of time and money to professional development for their teachers. Sometimes that investment pays off; other times, it doesn’t. As someone who is sometimes brought into schools to provide this PD, I get to see things from the presenter’s point of view: how teachers are welcomed in, the food and other refreshments that are provided, the way the physical spaces are set up, and how the time before and after my sessions is structured. 

When I presented last fall to a group of instructors who are part of one of the biggest local unions in the U.S., I was struck by the way the day was set up. My part was a 40-minute keynote in the morning and an hour-long workshop in the afternoon — those were pretty standard. But the people who coordinated the event added three thoughtful design choices that really grabbed my attention, and each one could easily be implemented into any PD day. 

Jenn White and Josh Kurzweil were the people behind that day. Through their educational consulting company, Berkeley LTC, they help organizations improve teaching and learning, often by designing professional learning experiences for adults.

On the podcast, we unpacked the three practices they built into that training day that I think would work beautifully in K–12 and higher education settings: Pre-During-Post, Curated Q&A, and Poster Sessions. Although each strategy serves a different purpose, they all build in time for participants to discuss, reflect on, and apply what they’re learning rather than simply receive information. You can listen to the full interview in the player above, read the transcript here, or get the quick version below.

Guiding Principles

White and Kurzweil both come from a TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) background, which has strongly influenced the way they design professional learning. One concept they learned through TESOL training is loop input, a term coined by teacher educator Tessa Woodward. With loop input, participants learn instructional methods by experiencing those methods as learners themselves.

As White explained, “Everything that we’re asking our instructors to do, we also want to model in the design and the delivery of our professional development.”

That commitment to modeling effective instruction, combined with research on how people learn — including books like Daniel Willingham’s Why Don’t Students Like School? — led White and Kurzweil to develop their own set of sixteen Principles of Learning. Those principles now guide both the training they provide and the professional learning experiences they design.

The Strategies

Strategy 1: Pre-During-Post

Pre-During-Post (PDP) is a framework for helping participants engage more deeply with any type of content, whether it’s a keynote, a reading, a video, or a podcast. Before taking in the content (the “pre”), participants activate prior knowledge and preview what they’re about to learn. During the content, they use some kind of structure, such as note-taking or guiding questions, to focus their attention. Afterward (the “post”), they discuss, reflect, and apply what they’ve learned. The result is that participants engage with the content more actively instead of simply consuming it.

On the day I presented, this structure was used for my keynote. All 200+ attendees were gathered in one large room at tables of about 10 people each. Before I went onstage, participants spent a few minutes at their tables discussing questions related to the keynote topic and reviewing a simple outline of the presentation. It wasn’t anything elaborate, but it ensured that participants were mentally engaged before the keynote even started.

During the presentation, participants had the outline to follow and were told they could take notes on it if they wanted to. Then immediately after, everyone was sent to breakout rooms to debrief in mixed groups from different regions and subject areas. In these sessions, participants were able to clarify some of the concepts from the keynote, share takeaways, and think through how they could apply the ideas from the keynote in their own classrooms.

Two features made this process especially powerful. First, the entire process took place on site, on the day of the event. The organizers could have sent materials ahead of time or asked participants to do the follow-up reflection later, but keeping the preparation, keynote, and processing together in one continuous sequence ensured that everyone moved through the experience with the same fresh context and a shared foundation for discussion.

Second, every group had the support of an instructor coach. These coaches facilitated the pre-keynote discussion, listened to the keynote alongside participants, and then guided the breakout conversations afterward. Having participated in plenty of breakout sessions myself, I know how easily groups can lose momentum or drift off topic. A skilled facilitator helps keep the conversation focused and ensures that participants get the most out of the time.

Strategy 2: Curated Q&A

During those breakout sessions, instructor coaches handed participants index cards and invited them to write down questions about the keynote. Those questions became the basis for a 30-minute Q&A session later in the day. Offering participants a chance to ask questions is a common feature of professional development, but the way White and Kurzweil structured this process made it far more effective:

• Time to process: Rather than asking for questions immediately after the keynote, they gave participants time in the breakout groups to process what they had heard. The result was more thoughtful, substantive questions.
• Collaborative reflection: Before submitting questions in the breakout sessions, participants discussed the keynote for quite a while. These conversations helped them clarify misunderstandings, test ideas, and identify questions they might not have arrived at on their own.
• Low-stakes participation: Writing questions on index cards removed the pressure of speaking up in front of a large audience, making it easier for everyone to participate.
• Curated questions: After collecting several dozen questions, White and I sorted them into themes, removed duplicates, selected the highest-priority questions, and arranged them in a logical sequence. This not only improved the overall quality of the Q&A, but also gave me time to think carefully about my responses.
• Facilitated discussion: During the session itself, White and the organization’s training director served as moderators, asking the selected questions and connecting the discussion back to participants’ day-to-day work.

None of these adjustments required special technology, expensive materials, or extensive planning, just a little extra time and a stack of index cards, but they dramatically improved the quality of the conversation and the value participants got from the experience.

Strategy 3: Poster Sessions

The middle part of the day had a mix of activities: the breakout sessions, lunch, and a few other workshop-type sessions and meetings. Then, before the final Q&A and closing, everyone attended poster sessions given by the instructor coaches themselves, taking advantage of the expertise that was right in the room.

Here’s how the poster sessions worked:

• Each presenter shared a single practical idea, strategy, or insight in a brief 7- to 8-minute session, using a poster made from eight printed PowerPoint slides. Presenters submitted their slides ahead of time so White and Kurzweil could review them and offer feedback before the posters were assembled.
• On the day of the event, participants received a map showing the location and topic of every poster session. After a few minutes to review their options and choose the sessions that interested them most, they attended three rounds of presentations. Each round lasted about eight minutes, with a minute in between for participants to move to a new poster. Presenters shared their ideas with small groups of roughly 10 to 12 people and answered questions; everyone remained standing, which helped keep the pace brisk and the energy high.
• After the three rounds were complete, participants returned to their tables for a debrief. In keeping with the Pre-During-Post framework, they first reflected with a partner and then discussed their learning with their larger table group and instructor coach.
• Finally, all presentation slides were shared in a Google Drive folder, allowing participants to revisit sessions they attended and explore those they missed.

None of these ideas are particularly revolutionary. That’s probably why I like them so much. They aren’t flashy, expensive, or complicated. They’re just simple, thoughtful design choices that create more opportunities for participants to think, talk, and learn from one another.

As Kurzweil observed during our conversation, “You can experience something, but then kind of yadda yadda yadda it and not really understand what just happened and how you felt.” The ideas described here slow things down just enough to make that processing possible. Whether you’re hosting a keynote, adding some PD to a faculty meeting, or planning a full day of professional development, these strategies can make the most of that investment.