But, consultants are regularly discredited for not currently being in the classroom. I get it—there are people who mainly keynote the same presentations over and over. But most of us, although we do present, spend a lot of time in schools and are continually iterating our own craft as “support staff” for the schools we serve.

Increasingly, there are those who discredit the entire role of school consulting.

Most recent example: on the t-bird, a person responded to a tweet I wrote that it was time to stop reading books written by people with PhDs and listen to real teachers.

Again, I get the message. (FYI— it’s the publishers who make almost all of the income from a book. The standard contract is that authors receive 15% of net, or for most books, about $1 a book. For some this ends up adding up over years.)

Again, I share the sentiment of difficulty with hiring a person
for a day to entertain. (I’ve written an article about this.) But I just needed to get this off my chest.

All of the roles in serving students have value. Clearly, there’s variation in how well, at any given time, any of us executes the skills for our jobs. This negativity echos, “those who can, do; and those who can’t, teach.”

All of this to say—there is clearly a problem. If we do feel professional development (in many forms—not just presentations) is potentially valuable, then how should educators be invited into the conversation of planning for this development, both for large groups as well as for small groups and individuals? PD is expensive and deserves careful consideration.

We should be asking critical questions!