A training day designed by Berkeley LTC uses three repeatable structures—Pre-During-Post, Curated Q&A, and Poster Sessions—to give teachers real time to process, discuss, and apply learning instead of just sit through information.
For many teachers, professional development can feel like a full day spent “getting through” content. The room fills up, the keynote begins, then the day ends—often without much time to translate what was heard into what happens the next morning in a classroom.
That mismatch is exactly what one educator says they started noticing firsthand while being brought into schools and districts to provide professional development sessions—watching how instructors are welcomed in. how spaces are set up. what kind of food and refreshments are offered. and. most importantly. how time before and after sessions is structured.
Last fall, the day drew particular attention. The main blocks looked familiar: a 40-minute keynote in the morning and an hour-long workshop in the afternoon. What stood out were three design choices built into the event—and they were credited to Jenn White and Josh Kurzweil. whose educational consulting company Berkeley LTC helps organizations improve teaching and learning. including by designing professional learning experiences for adults.
On the podcast interview, White and Kurzweil broke down the three practices they used—Pre-During-Post, Curated Q&A, and Poster Sessions—showing how each one builds in time for participants to discuss, reflect, and apply what they’re learning rather than only receiving information.
The thread running through all of it is a TESOL background. White and Kurzweil described how their approach was shaped by TESOL training and a concept called loop input. a term coined by teacher educator Tessa Woodward. With loop input, participants learn instructional methods by experiencing those methods as learners themselves.
As White put it: “Everything that we’re asking our instructors to do, we also want to model in the design and the delivery of our professional development.”
That commitment to modeling effective instruction. along with research on how people learn—including books like Daniel Willingham’s Why Don’t Students Like School?—led White and Kurzweil to develop sixteen Principles of Learning. Those principles now guide both the training they provide and the professional learning experiences they design.
Pre-During-Post: activating minds before, and work after
Pre-During-Post, or PDP, is a framework aimed at helping participants engage more deeply with any kind of content—whether it’s a keynote, a reading, a video, or a podcast.
Before the content, participants activate prior knowledge and preview what they’re about to learn. During the content, they use some kind of structure—such as note-taking or guiding questions—to keep attention anchored. Afterward, they discuss, reflect, and apply what they learned.
In the training day described, PDP was used for the keynote. All 200+ attendees were gathered in one large room at tables of about 10 people each. Before the keynote started. participants spent a few minutes at their tables discussing questions tied to the keynote topic and reviewing a simple outline of the presentation.
During the keynote. participants had the outline to follow and were told they could take notes on it if they wanted to. Then, immediately after, everyone was sent to breakout rooms to debrief in mixed groups from different regions and subject areas. In those conversations. participants clarified concepts from the keynote. shared takeaways. and worked through how to apply the ideas in their own classrooms.
Two features were described as especially powerful. First, the entire process happened on site, on the day of the event, with preparation, the keynote, and processing kept together in one continuous sequence rather than pushed into separate follow-up later.
Second, each breakout group had an instructor coach. The coaches facilitated the pre-keynote discussion, listened to the keynote alongside participants, and then guided the breakout conversations afterward—support meant to prevent groups from losing momentum or drifting off topic.
Curated Q&A: questions that arrive after thinking
The second strategy reshaped how questions were handled.
During the breakout sessions, instructor coaches handed participants index cards and invited them to write down questions about the keynote. Those questions then became the basis for a 30-minute Q&A session later that day.
Instead of asking for questions immediately after the keynote, White and Kurzweil built in time for processing first in the breakout groups. They described the result as more thoughtful, substantive questions.
The method also relied on collaborative reflection: before writing questions, participants discussed the keynote for quite a while to clarify misunderstandings, test ideas, and surface questions they might not have arrived at on their own.
The index card format was designed as low-stakes participation—removing the pressure of speaking up in front of a large audience.
Then came curation. After collecting several dozen questions. White sorted the questions into themes. removed duplicates. selected the highest-priority questions. and arranged them in a logical sequence. The goal was to improve the overall quality of the Q&A while giving time to plan responses carefully.
During the session, White and the organization’s training director served as moderators—asking the selected questions and connecting discussion back to participants’ day-to-day work.
The day’s Q&A structure, according to the description, required no special technology, expensive materials, or extensive planning—just extra time and a stack of index cards.
Poster sessions: expertise in the room, at speed
The middle of the day included breakout sessions, lunch, and other workshop-type sessions and meetings. Then, before the final Q&A and closing, participants attended poster sessions given by the instructor coaches themselves, drawing on expertise already present in the room.
The poster sessions worked like this. Each presenter shared a single practical idea. strategy. or insight in a brief 7- to 8-minute session. using a poster made from eight printed PowerPoint slides. Presenters submitted slides ahead of time so White and Kurzweil could review them and offer feedback before the posters were assembled.
On the event day, participants received a map showing the location and topic of every poster session. They had a few minutes to review their options and choose the sessions they wanted to attend most. Then they moved through three rounds of presentations. Each round lasted about eight minutes, with a minute in between for participants to move to a new poster.
Each poster presentation was delivered to small groups of roughly 10 to 12 people. Everyone remained standing to keep the pace brisk and energy high. After the three rounds were complete, participants returned to their tables for a debrief.
That debrief followed the Pre-During-Post framework again: participants first reflected with a partner, then discussed what they learned with their larger table group and their instructor coach.
Finally, all presentation slides were shared in a Google Drive folder so participants could revisit sessions they attended and also explore ones they missed.
A quote about what gets lost—and what these structures fix
The lesson, in the way the interview frames it, is not that these ideas are revolutionary. They were described as simple, thoughtful design choices that create more opportunities for participants to think, talk, and learn from one another.
Kurzweil offered a line that lands hard because it names a common failure point in professional learning. He said: “You can experience something, but then kind of yadda yadda yadda it and not really understand what just happened and how you felt.”
In the account of this training day. Pre-During-Post. Curated Q&A. and Poster Sessions were presented as ways to slow things down just enough to make that processing possible—whether the setting is a keynote. professional development added to a faculty meeting. or a full day of professional development.
Even the sign-up pitch at the end of the page reinforced the promise of ongoing support for teachers: an invitation to join a mailing list for weekly tips. tools. and inspiration. plus access to a members-only library of free downloads. including “20 Ways to Cut Your Grading Time in Half” and an e-booklet. with “Over 50. 000 teachers” already joined.
professional development teacher training K-12 PD adult learning Pre-During-Post Curated Q&A poster sessions Berkeley LTC loop input TESOL
So basically don’t just listen? cool i guess.
I mean “professional development” always turns into a long day babysitting, so yeah Pre-During-Post sounds like it would actually help. But are they paying teachers to do it or is this still during their free time? Just seems like another schedule thing.
Wait, I thought the issue was funding and class sizes, not like the poster sessions part? Like if the classroom is already packed and there’s no supplies, how does a curated Q&A fix anything. Also “keynote begins” made me laugh because that’s exactly how our district does it… then nobody remembers anything the next week.
Berkeley LTC doing this is fine but honestly this sounds like common sense marketing. Pre-During-Post, ok, but teachers have been “discussing” forever. I’m just wondering if the food/room setup is really what makes it stick, because I’ve seen people get caffeinated and then go back to doing the same stuff. Also poster sessions?? some teachers hate that vibe.