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A gifted education specialist explains how to energize professional development while minding your budget.

Effective professional development walks that fine line between satisfying the teachers and satisfying building-level, district-level, state-level, or national-level expectations of what teachers need to be learning. If we focus solely on what teachers request, some important topics could be overlooked. But if we focus solely on fulfilling bureaucratic expectations, the teachers can become a less-than-receptive audience.

My district has implemented a few strategies in recent years that have proven to be very effective. Perhaps some of these ideas could work in your location as well. • Give teachers a role in planning

In the online forums section of teachermagazine.org, we recently asked readers to describe how they would improve professional development in their schools. Here are some of the responses: