other and wondering how they'd been matched up in the same group together. You'd also see people having hard conversations and challenging each other's thinking, and you might witness educators grappling with new ideas and skills. PD would still be purposeful and rigorous and structured. But the atmosphere would be lighter, more joyful, and characterized by meaningful connections between participants.
When we say, “What if PD could be like a party?” we're pointing toward the possibility of a gathering that feels very different from traditional PD, toward the social and emotional conditions needed for deep connection and learning. That said, we're also not opposed to the occasional costume, streamer, or rock‐paper‐scissors tournament. As we share the habits you can use to create transformative PD, we'll occasionally bring you back to this notion that PD could be something that feels fundamentally different from the typical PD experience, that perhaps PD could feel more like a party.
The Principles of Transformative PD
While we've got one big vision for transformative PD feeling more like a party, beneath the seven habits we outline in this book are a set of deeply held beliefs. We want to surface these, name them, and share them with you so that you know where we're coming from. As you read our principles, consider which ones resonate with you. The following are the Principles of Transformative PD:
Humans are bursting with untapped resilience, strength, and abilities. We have an unfathomable capacity to change and transform, to grow and learn, to love and connect with others. Given the right conditions, we can unlock our potential.
Teachers create the conditions in which transformative learning happens; we embrace this opportunity as our responsibility.
Learning is a basic human need. Human beings want to develop and grow and fulfill our potential, and then we want to grow some more.
Learning is a social process. Human beings are social creatures—we need each other to learn; we learn exponentially more when we're in healthy community than when we learn alone.
Learning is the pathway to justice, healing, and liberation. For justice, healing and liberation to exist, there's a tremendous amount that needs to change. The only way for us to change is by learning. The only way for us to heal and repair our beautiful, broken world is by learning. If we can figure out how to learn and how to create spaces for others to learn, we can be free.
Learning is transformative when the whole range of human emotions are experienced, including joy and love.
Who We Are and Who You Are
If we were physically in the same room, we'd engage you in activities to get to know each other. One of our favorites when we do workshops is to name a number of categories and ask folks to stand (if standing is accessible to them) if the category applies to them. For example, we'll say, “Stand if you come from a family of educators” or “stand if you love teaching middle schoolers” or “stand if you serve the community in which you were raised.” This is a quick activity that gives folks a sense of who is in the room. Sometimes we insert a humorous category so that we can get people laughing and help them relax. We follow this activity by introducing ourselves as your facilitators. We'll do the same thing, now, in written form, of course.
Who We Are: The Authors
We are both life‐long educators who share a deep commitment to tikkun olam, the Jewish concept of healing and transforming the world. We also both love words; we love reading and writing, drinking coffee, and eating cheese; and we're drawn to the redwoods and the Pacific Ocean. We can be shy and socially awkward but thrive in healthy communities, so we seek to create communities where each person is seen for who they truly are. We both still design and deliver PD almost every week.
Lori has worked in both public and independent schools since 1999, as a teacher, instructional coach, administrator, and facilitator. Early on in her career, Lori realized she had two great loves in education: teaching young people and teaching adults. She has had the good fortune to do both, bringing an infusion of humor and heart to every learning experience. Throughout Lori's leadership journey, equity has been a central lens through which she creates the conditions for transformational learning. Lori identifies as a Jewish, queer, white, cisgender, English‐speaking woman. She was a first‐generation college student who put herself through school; this experience informs Lori's big questions about equity and access, power, and privilege.
Elena became a teacher in 1994 and spent 19 years working in the Oakland, California, public schools, where she was a teacher, instructional coach, leadership coach, and administrator. Following the publication of her first book, The Art of Coaching (2013), Elena founded Bright Morning Consulting and began delivering professional development sessions across the United States and abroad. Her trainings are based on her model of Transformational Coaching and on her books on team development (The Art of Coaching Teams, 2016), resilience (Onward, 2018), and educational equity (Coaching for Equity, 2020). Elena is also the host of the Bright Morning Podcast where she models coaching conversations. Elena identifies as Latina and Jewish, as a cisgender, heterosexual woman, as a Spanish‐bilingual immigrant, and with the lower socioeconomic status of her childhood. In addition, she is a mother. These identity experiences profoundly affect how she thinks about education, learning spaces, and community.
Lori joined the Bright Morning team in 2019 and contributed to The Art of Coaching Workbook (Aguilar, 2020). Writing this book together has been a tremendous learning experience. We're amazed by how we've grown individually, by the way our partnership has deepened, and by what two heads (and hearts) can create.
Who You Are: The Readers
We are assuming you are tasked with designing and delivering professional development in the education world. Although we're writing to you as “PD providers,” we know readers of this book serve many different roles. Some of you might be instructional coaches responsible for delivering PD at your sites or across your district. Others might be site administrators, perhaps principals who (on top of everything else) lead PD. Perhaps some of you are external consultants who partner with schools and organizations and who have curriculum you've created that you want to share with others. We're guessing that many of you might be teacher leaders—perhaps a department chair or an Instructional Leadership Team member who has volunteered or been asked to provide PD. We hope that there are folks reading this book who are in roles with titles such as Director of Professional Development or Chief Academic Officer. Whatever role you serve in, we hope you'll learn strategies to create true cultures of learning.
Our assumption is that your roles and responsibilities beyond designing and delivering PD shape your work as a PD provider. As we describe the habits in this book, we'll explore the nuances of holding these different roles and the impact of positional authority on how you deliver PD. We also want to be mindful of how much time you have and how stretched you likely are. We recognize your commitment to delivering transformative PD, and we are aware of your capacity limits. Therefore, we'll often be direct and instructive about what matters most.
What Is in This Book?
If you were going to attend a PD session with us, we'd let you know before you showed up what to expect. We'd tell you what will happen and why, we'd tell you how the learning will happen, and we'd give you tips on how to get the most out of the learning experience. We might also assign pre‐work so that you'd be primed for the learning. We hope you'll experience this book as a learning experience, so we want you to know what's in it—what you can anticipate, suggestions for how to read and use
