In this article…
Zoom meeting, by Terry Freedman
Introduction
So, you’ve discovered a conference you’d like to attend, but there’s a real possibility that your boss will say “No”. What can you do to maximise your chances of being allowed to attend?
At this juncture I’d like to interrupt myself to say two things.
Firstly, the points made in this article apply just as much to online conferences that take place in school time.
Secondly, I think that it’s demeaning for teachers to have to ask permission to attend. I can understand that there may be circumstances where the school couldn’t function if too many teachers were out at the same time, but having to make the case for actually registering for an event is, in my opinion, treating teachers as if they were (a) non-professionals and (b) children.
In one school I worked in the new headteacher decided too many people had booked themselves onto training events, so he summarily cancelled the lot. He didn’t seem to have realised that a whole raft of new qualifications were going to be taught in the forthcoming academic year, so we had to know how they were going to be assessed, what resources were available and so on. After a near-revolution he relented, but it shouldn’t have come to that in the first place.
One school I visited had what I thought was a great approach to teachers’ in-service training. Each teacher was given a certain number of hours to spend on training, and they could spend it how they liked. The only limitations were (a) whether there was enough money to pay for attending a conference and the associated costs such as supply teachers, and how many other teachers had already booked training for themselves at the same time. But the key thing is that they didn’t have to try and justify why they felt they needed the training in the first place. It was taken as read that whatever training a teacher had decided they needed would, in some way, benefit the school as a whole.
And that’s what I mean by treating teachers as professionals. As I wrote in my review of The Turning Point:
“When the term “teaching profession” arises, my reaction is more often than not to borrow from Gandhi and opine that such a thing would be a good idea.
This is not to disparage teachers. Given that the government has laid down what must be taught, periodically pontificates on the ‘best’ teaching methods, goes so far as to indicate a preference for particular resources and has appointed an external organisation to oversee quality control, can teaching be truly thought of as a profession?”
The suggestions which follow cannot, obviously, be guaranteed to succeed. However, they will almost certainly give you more of a fighting chance than the usual approach, which is just to ask for three days out of school. The trick when talking to supervisors is to make your problem their problem, and their problem your problem. Let’s start with the first, making your problem their problem.
Making your problem their problem
Reasons to be allowed to attend
It’s a big challenge keeping up with current thinking and research and practice, so a conference can be a very useful way of doing so very quickly. The issue is: will you get more from going to the conference than you could obtain by other means? In this respect, two factors come into play.
Your interest
First, does the conference, or a particular theme or strand of the conference, deal with something you’re especially involved in?
For example, are you running a particular course, are you about to buy and implement a particular type of learning platform, are you about to enter your students for a particular examination? These kinds of needs, if addressed by the conference, are powerful arguments in favour of your being permitted to attend.
Speaker expertise
Second, do the speakers have particular expertise in the area of concern? Note that this is not the same as “is the speaker famous?” If you’re about to start a new course, and the main speaker is one of the writers of the course, or from the relevant Awarding Body, that is likely to be much more useful than an entertaining but, ultimately, empty talk by a well-known personality.
Really, you need to attend sessions by people who know what they’re talking about. A conference I attended some years ago decided, very unfairly I thought, to programme a keynote address at the same time as a talk by a young female primary school teacher. I decided to attend her session rather than the one being given by an ego on legs. She was absolutely brilliant, because she had some really practical ideas for teaching, ideas she’d tried out and honed in her own lessons.
Networking
Also, there is a need to network. Even the best schools can become complacent or out of touch, if they have no external reference point by which to judge themselves. When I used to do inspections of schools’ ICT provision I often found myself recommending to the subject leader that s/he starts to make visits to other schools to see what they’re doing. You can’t really pick up good ideas from reading about them in quite the same way as you can by actually seeing the ideas in practice and asking questions of the appropriate people.
In fact, networking is so important that whenever I am involved in organising conferences I ensure that there is time for people to meet informally, and I always try to have this billed in the programme as “social networking” or “networking”, as opposed to “Bar”. Having “bar” as a timetabled activity almost invariably elicits the response from senior management. “Why should I have to pay for you to go on a junket?” The fact that it takes place in your own time doesn’t make any difference, because it’s the perception that counts in cases like this.
Making their problem your problem
Minimise the disruption
If it’s possible to set work that requires very little effort by another teacher, but which is still useful, then do so. For example, you could set everything up on the school network in advance.
You can also compile folders for each lesson. Imagine being a cover teacher, and handed a folder containing the instructions to the class “Log on and click on the X icon”, a list of students’ names and their login details, and simple instructions about what they have to do.
Minimise the cost
While you’re away, the school may have to hire a temporary teacher. There are two main ways you can try to avoid or minimise this cost.
First, it may be possible for you to organise cover within your team, if you have one. This make sense from a learning point of view, because it means that the students will still be being taught in your absence. However, if your co-workers agree to this arrangement, you must negotiate a quid pro quo whereby they will not be asked to cover others’ lessons in addition. In other words, nobody should end up doing more cover work than they normally would.
The second is to see if there is a possibility of volunteering to assist with the conference arrangements, or to speak at the conference, in return for a free place and money to cover supply teachers. Obviously, not every delegate will be able to enjoy this kind of arrangement, but in my experience most of them never ask.
As I’ve said, these approaches are not absolutely guaranteed to work, but one thing is for certain: they mark you out as a professional who believes it’s their right to have access to continuing professional development.
Click the pic to see this book on Amazon
If you go to education conferences (or would like to), you may find my book useful. It’s called Education Conferences: Teachers’ guide to getting the most out of conferences. Click on the link for more information. It was published a few years ago, but still contains a lot of useful information.
From the reviews on Amazon:
[This book] will give you all the ammunition, arguments and persuasion you need to make the case for attending a conference.
— Mr. M. V. Norwood
Not only is this a brilliant read, but it must be required reading for anyone wanting to attend a conference….The detail is fantastic, and well worth reading! — C. Ratcliffe
I've always enjoyed Terry's writing, which is plain, simple, insightful stuff and this ebook is no different. It covers a lot of ground and reinforces many of the important points that seasoned conference-goers so often forget. — William F. Gibbon
See more reviews here.