Planning for and delivering high-quality professional learning in the world of career and technical education is an ever-evolving quest for relevancy. Quite often, CTE teachers are departments of one. And the curricular needs of a health sciences teacher are vastly different from those of the construction trades teacher. This renders content-based professional development — long said to be a nonnegotiable for instructional coaches — nearly impossible.
Delivering relevant and actionable professional learning for CTE teachers requires a shift from passive classroom observations to active coaching. With one foot in the world of education and the other foot in the shop, lab, or kitchen. These unique challenges demand a model that is prescriptive, subversive, and deliberate at the same time. It must provide clear, organized pathways for teachers who come to the table with the full spectrum of expertise and industry knowledge. While always centering teachers, great professional learning should be challenging, intention-ally calling into question the traditional, top-down structures, in an effort to empower the industry experts on staff.
Enter: The symposium style of professional learning
The symposium model of professional learning addresses these aims by offering a structured framework rooted in teacher choice. Rather than offering a universal session for all participants, a symposium schedule is differentiated yet prescriptive in its design. It guides educators toward specific sessions based on their current needs and levels of expertise. It values and reaffirms those seeking baseline content just as it does those who are ready for a challenge.
Instructional leaders tasked with delivering professional learning must share the belief that great leaders build great leaders. How then can we provide platforms for practicing instructors to emerge as leaders, guiding and coaching their peers around topics of interest?
A cornerstone of this model is honoring the time it takes to do the work of teaching. High-quality instruction requires immense planning. A teacher’s day starts well before students enter the classroom, and it certainly doesn’t end when they leave. Impactful instruction takes time on the couch at home and well after the streetlights turn on. This is why one of the most common, and relevant, criticisms of professional development is the lack of time and space for teachers to plan for the implementation of new ideas. The symposium model fixes this by providing dedicated time for teachers to create, plan, and revise tools like proficiency scales, backward unit plans, or tiered assessments, alongside their colleagues. This fosters an energized “here-to-learn” mindset, and a sense of collaborative grit begins to replace the fatigue.
By prioritizing efficiency and depth, CTE instructional leaders can challenge the status quo, burgeon new leaders and encourage teachers to do the work worth doing.
How to build a symposium
To build a successful symposium schedule, leaders must be deliberate and prescriptive, organizing the day into clear pathways that address the specific needs of their teachers. A sample schedule might consist of four sessions, two in the morning and two in the afternoon, always categorized by complexity and target audience. For instance, a morning session might include “Scaffolding vs. Tiering,” offering introductory pedagogical knowledge, as well as “Student-Drafted Proficiency Scales” for those teachers looking for a challenge.
When selecting session topics, effective options are those that are subversive, moving beyond pedagogical theory to facilitate actual in-class implementation. Recently, our best sessions included topics like “Proficiency Scale Revision,” “Student Learning Objective Drafting” and “Tiering Summative Assessments.” These sessions were successful because they provided that essential time and space for teachers to plan and implement instructional moves alongside their peers. Conversely, ineffective topics are those that are overly generic or fail to result in a tangible product, leaving teachers without the necessary time or support to plan for new strategies.
This structure ensures that while the day is highly organized, it remains teacher-driven with guided choices.
Administrators should lead sessions when the topic demands it, typically for high-level systemic alignment like our recent session called “Response to Intervention and Effective Co-Teaching.” However, because we always want to encourage leadership growth and development, most practical sessions should be led by those doing the work in the classroom. Leveraging the answers in the room on topics like “Embracing AI” or “Purposeful Movement” celebrates internal expertise.
Those planning symposium-style professional learning opportunities need to ask themselves, “Who will be doing the work in this session?” The answer to that question is then the person who should lead that session. In a Back-to-School symposium held in August 2025 in my district, an administrator led the session on legislative updates and changes to our attendance procedures, while a veteran teacher led the session on how to use student exemplars to prompt knowledge revision in a lab setting.
Why it works
Symposia cultivate a mindset centered on teacher choice and collaborative grit. By providing organized pathways, the model ensures teachers do not feel lost; instead, they navigate the learning process along-side their peers and within their instructional teams. This approach allows administrators to lead with action, demonstrating that high-quality instruction requires a de-liberate investment of time and resources.
Next, this model succeeds by honoring the time it takes to do the work of teaching. Traditional professional development often fails to provide the time and space required to move from theory to implementation. The symposium schedule specifically allocates time for teachers to complete planning or creation tasks such as revising proficiency scales or tiering summative assessments — all while instructional leaders are present to offer immediate coaching and support.
Finally, this model celebrates internal expertise, operating on the principle that the answers are in the room. The symposium allows instructional experts to emerge and lead sessions on timely and meaningful topics like using AI as an instructional tool, purposeful movement, and student self-assessment. Rather than seeking external solutions, this teacher-driven framework utilizes the specialized knowledge already present in the building.
Ultimately, the symposium model is an efficient delivery system for high-quality learning. By being prescriptive in its organization and subversive in its empowerment of staff, it fosters a building-wide ownership of the fact that teachers are the primary architects of student achievement. It proves that the faculty is capable, valuable and supported, putting the power of professional growth back into their hands.
Matt Griesinger is assistant principal of Career Tech at Northwest Education Services in Traverse City, Michigan.
