Delivery by 3:30 p.m.

by Iowa Future

September 20, 2011

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Okoboji high school and middle school teachers recently participated in a transformed professional development that they called FedEx Day. The activity offered a half-day of self-directed learning for the staff with the potential for innovative new programs or practices in the schools.

Brian Downing, high school principal, writes about the day on his blog, From the Hallways of OHS. A post by Patrick Hogan on the TransformED blog also provides an overview of the day.

Teachers could spend the day developing a new idea, a better internal process, a refined lesson plan or project, or any other idea to benefit student learning. Teachers had a great deal of freedom in their choices, but were required to deliver a product by 3:30 p.m.

One key to the success of the day will be whether ideas and projects developed make their way into the classroom, Hogan writes. Downing and Ryan Cunningham, middle school principal, say they will be keeping an eye on that.

The idea for the day is based on a regular program in place at Atlassian, an Australian maker of software development tools. Daniel Pink took FedEx Day mainstream by writing about it in his book, Drive. Pink says Altassian calls the program FedEx Day because under their approach, developers had to develop something overnight. Check out Pink’s overview on the Pink Blog.