Guerilla PD: Tactical Strikes to Address Teachers’ Learning Needs

The news last March of a novel coronavirus may have closed the buildings of the Columbia Borough School District in central Pennsylvania, but it also served as the catalyst for a districtwide transformation. As school building closures stretched from weeks into months, our initial concern was the potential loss of learning for our students, but then our focus shifted to the professional development needs of our teachers who were designing new digital systems for learning.

The district’s poverty rate of 66 percent never was so keenly felt as in the early days of the pandemic. The economic gap between the “haves” and “have nots” had the potential to deny learning to some of our most vulnerable students. 

Principals and technicians attacked the laptop carts in their buildings to harvest computers for distribution to those remote learners trapped at home. Our teachers were driven to make a digital connection with each learner, first for safety and then for educational opportunity.

Ironically, what was to be our last day of open buildings for the 2019-20 school year was also our last districtwide professional development day. In true heroic fashion, teachers rapidly made the transition to remote learning because it was the best option we had to reach our students.

As the curriculum director, I needed a brief and adaptable training system to provide just-in-time support amid fast-moving developments.

Guerilla Tactics

I think of traditional “sit-and-git” professional development like the troop formations of ancient, well-funded armies: They can stand on open fields in all their glory and face a visible opponent. The pandemic plunged our school district of 1,265 students into a jungle of uncertainty.

The term guerilla was pulled from the style of military campaigns where combatants form small bands of soldiers who use their limited numbers and resources to move swiftly over difficult terrain as an advantage over the larger more lumbering armies.

I used Guerilla PD to put in place instructional strategies and digital tools through the early months of the pandemic. One illustrative example involves our implementation of Kami, an online tool for annotation and collaboration.

Delivering Solutions

The phases of implementation were threefold.

 Identify the perceived problem. Early in the pandemic, I scheduled daily Zoom briefings to support teachers transitioning to remote learning. These included open forums where teachers shared their problems. I recorded their problems and researched digital solutions.

The abrupt shift had left many teachers without access to their classroom resources. A few teachers requested a digital tool that would allow the sharing of interactive digital documents. Kami appeared to fill the need.

 Develop a Google Docs agenda. The teachers had limited time for PD, so I set a strict limit of 20 minutes (or less) for each session. This meant breaking up large implementations into small competency-based pieces. We wanted teachers to complete a session being able to do something new.

I used Google Docs to design an agenda that included hyperlinking key concepts or competencies. Hyperlinking allowed participants to click on terms and be redirected to an-other layer of information. For the Kami implementation, I started with the process for signing up for an account and sharing an interactive PDF.

 Form collaborative communities of practice. In implementing a new tool or strategy, I have found teachers naturally form collaborative communities around trusted individuals who will help them deal with change and actionable solutions. 

Guerilla PD must be requested, and the small group of participants should explore the solution to their perceived problem.

As just-in-time training, Guerilla PD listens to teachers’ problems and supports their informal communities of practice seeking to implement new strategies and use new technologies.

GREGG MCGOUGH is director of curriculum of the Columbia Borough School District in Columbia, Pa.
@McGough3R