How to Set Up District-Wide Choice-Based Professional Development

As an edtech coach, I constantly seek innovative ways to deliver impactful professional development (PD), and when our district decided to transition from Microsoft to Google, I saw an opportunity to reimagine our approach to PD. My team of edtech specialists, plus our administrators and I.T. department, and I created Google Day, setting up a transformative model that engaged our entire staff and created lasting impact.

While our focus was a major platform change, this model can be adapted for any professional development topics or district-wide rollouts. Whether you‘re introducing a new curriculum or teaching strategies or starting any other initiative, the principles we applied can help you create a dynamic, effective PD experience.

Getting Started

Our journey began about four months before the big day. First, we secured a date that was already designated as a district-wide in-service day. Then, as we brainstormed ways to make the platform transition smooth and maybe even exciting, we realized that our greatest asset was right under our noses: our tech-savvy teachers. Why bring in outside experts when we had a wealth of knowledge within our schools?

This led us to set up a team we called Google Gurus, 36 teachers who would become the backbone of our PD day. I worked with my edtech specialists to identify teachers who were already Google enthusiasts.

But we didn’t just ask them to present—we made it worth their while with a package that included a small stipend, custom Google Guru stickers, and a letter of commendation from the superintendent. We also sponsored their Google Level 1 certification courses, investing in their continued growth, and featured them on the new Google website that we began building. This public acknowledgment not only boosted their confidence but also built trust among their peers, who could read about their expertise.

In planning the content of the PD, we gave our Gurus a list of eight Google topics that we had identified as ones we needed to cover and let them choose the topic(s) they were most passionate about, and then we worked together as a team to ensure we covered all these necessary topics.

Building a Digital Hub

As we planned the event, we realized we needed a central location for all our resources. We built a website to be our digital hub and the cornerstone of our ongoing PD efforts. It included an explanation of Google Day’s purpose and structure, a showcase of the Gurus, and links to certification courses with related quizzes on our eight topics. The final touch was a tab called The Big Page of Googly Everything, a treasure trove of slide decks covering dozens of related topics, which we continue to add to as we find or create new resources.

Beyond Google Day, this website has become a great resource for teachers—it’s invaluable for new hires and a go-to for anyone needing a refresher. It‘s a self-paced PD platform that extends the impact of our initial event indefinitely. A second grade teacher told me, “I know just where to go for self-paced enrichment PD for myself all summer long—the Big Page of Googly Everything!”

Crafting the Perfect PD Day

When Google Day arrived, we were ready to wow our staff with the eight courses mentioned above—each person could choose four that best fit their needs. This element of choice was crucial as it gave our educators a sense of control over their learning journey.

We ran the event simultaneously at four campuses to serve all staff. Each location was run the same way, and we mixed in-person sessions with video courses, allowing staff to tailor their experience to their needs.

One of our biggest challenges was scheduling over 900 people into their chosen sessions at the four locations. We used Google Forms and Sheets, complete with formulas, to help with session signups and to manage the scheduling data. We sent a signup form to all district certified staff and used the spreadsheet that collated that signup data to keep track of the sessions that people selected.

Since we capped sessions at 30–35 people, we used the signup data to determine how many rooms we needed at each location, and we added more of the most-requested sessions and reduced the number of the least-requested ones. The Gurus were very flexible about switching to the most-requested topics to accommodate those numbers. One of my edtech team members set up a mail merge to send personalized schedule emails to every participant.

Lessons Learned and Future Applications

The beauty of this model is its versatility. While we used it for our Google transition, it can easily be adapted for curriculum rollouts, new teaching strategies, or any district-wide initiative. The key elements—leveraging in-house expertise, offering choice in sessions, and creating a lasting set of resources—can be applied to virtually any PD need.

We learned that starting early is crucial: Those four months of preparation allowed us to build excitement and to iron out a few kinks, such as the number of people that could sign up for each session. We quickly learned that we’d forgotten to assign a cap to each session room—it needed to be about 30–35 people—so we had to do quite a bit of manual reconfiguration.

The impact has been incredible. The greatest feedback we got was that teachers truly appreciated having so much choice in session topics and a choice between in-person and video sessions. They were grateful for the chance to move and discuss their learning with their colleagues between sessions because it wasn’t just “sit & get” PD. Teachers continue to access the website for self-paced learning, and new hires have a ready-made onboarding resource. This model has transformed how we approach professional development, creating a culture of continuous learning and growth.