Professional Development: Choose your own adventure?

As teachers we’re working to make our students lifelong learners. We hear that phrase a lot and it is certainly an honorable goal. The other thing we’re doing, though, is making lifelong learners of ourselves. Aside from the fact that teaching is a constant learning process (for example, I’ve learned that giving a four year old an entire bottle of glue is a bad idea…) we are also attending conferences, workshops, seminars and the like far beyond our years of formal teacher training. 

The MiniMasters program has a built-in professional development component. We offer teacher workshops to our participating educators on a quarterly basis. So far we’ve covered:  discussing art with young children, the Beautiful Stuff process, displaying student artwork, creating multi-disciplinary thematic units and nurturing creativity.   

Teachers at our fall workshop practice talking about art with children

These workshops are great opportunities for teachers to interact with each other and for me to get a sense of what they’d like to know more about. However, I’m worried that I’m not being as creative in designing teacher workshops as I would be in designing lesson plans for my students. So, my question is: What kinds of professional development opportunities do you like best? Hands-on activities? Group discussions? Lectures? Also, is there anything art or museum related you think teachers would like to learn more about?

(p.s. I had a really fantastic professional development experience here this past spring. You should check it out.)