This morning I read a great post by Joel Ralph of Canada’s National History Society. In his position as the education guy with the History Society, Joel spends a lot of time working with teachers in general, and at conferences in particular. He’s seen how a lot of history teachers meet for PD sessions and he has some doubts about how it works.

What’s the problem? Teachers who teach the same discipline all show up at these conferences, but the conference does “not actually provide space and time for them to talk to each other.” In other words, as teachers we go to conferences, listen to and watch presentations, and never actually talk to the many people there who are working in the history classrooms doing the same things we do.

Joel wants more of an “unconference” where people are free to talk and mill about with others in an environment with limited structure. Lightning Talks may be featured to give the event some cohesion and talking points to start conversations.

I like Joel’s ideas. I know him and he’s a bright guy so I don’t doubt his ideas. What I’m a bit skeptical about is the teachers. I’ve tried coaxing teachers into sharing ideas, lesson plans, or exams face-to-face and online and it’s not easy. Teachers don’t readily share. We learn quickly to scrabble and collect all the resources we can so our own classroom can be better and our own lives can be a little bit simpler. We don’t quickly share our ideas because if another teacher takes our idea and uses it in his classroom, we may not be able to use it in our own.

We tend to go to conferences the same way we teach. Most teachers stand in front of the room and the class is very teacher-centric. The notable exception to that is computer teachers, especially those dealing with new media that emphasizes collaboration. These teachers tend to go alongside their students and spend time coaching rather than lecturing. Lecturing is still necessary from time to time, but it’s not the focus.

In the same way, most teachers expect to be told what to do by some authority figure, rather than gently nudged and coaxed into doing something in a sharing session. The notable exception to that seems to be computer teachers. The Manitoba Association of Computing Educators has held a couple of brilliant and unorthodox unconferences that Joel would’ve really appreciated. (One was even held in a pub.)

Can an unconference work with history teachers? Maybe. I hope so because I think Joel’s right and the current system of conferences needs updating. Facebook, Twitter, and iPhones are changing the way kids communicate, and as teachers we can learn from that and figure out better ways for us to communicate. While some of the things the kids are doing aren’t great, a lot bear some investigation. Milling about with a bit less structure can lead to surprising conversations and unexpected insights.

It’s risky. Trying something new in your classroom or your professional development can lead to miserably disappointing results. But the only way to test an idea’s brilliance is to take it and run with it. If we never try anything new, we’ll never know if there’s a better way.