It’s 4:00pm on a Wednesday afternoon, and I’m sitting in an elementary school library with the other 35 teachers who work at my school. At the front of the room, our principal explains best practices for teaching reading to students in small groups. Several new teachers are leaning forward, taking notes, and hanging on to every word of the lesson. But sure enough, a handful of teachers are surreptitiously grading papers or blatantly scanning Facebook on their cell phones.

Other weeks, our staff training is perfect for math teachers, but leaves reading teachers struggling to apply what we learn to their classrooms. Rarely does the music teacher leave feeling as if it was a good use of her time.

This scenario of one-size-(whether it fits or not)-all teacher professional development is pretty typical across the country. The elementary school where I served for 10 years employed kindergarten teachers, middle school science teachers, art teachers, and everything in between. Staff experience ranged from a few months to 30+ years of service. Most teachers tried to find relevance in these meetings — but just as each of my students was unique, my colleagues all had different needs. Unfortunately, teacher’s professional development offerings rarely reflect that reality.

For years, researchers have found that teacher quality is the single biggest school-based influencer on student achievement. If you’ve watched the news recently, you’ve heard the siren scream that many classrooms, particularly those in high-need communities, are staffed by ineffective teachers.

In my experience, teachers — even those who are struggling — want to be good at their jobs, and they want their students to be successful. Districts and states spend billions of dollars on teacher professional development each year. And by all reports, we aren’t seeing a return on that investment.

What if it were different? What if school leaders differentiated staff development the same way we expect teachers to tailor instruction for their students? If I needed help assessing student learning, I would get support in crafting and asking questions. If the teacher next door was losing instructional time during transitions, she would learn how to design and teach efficient procedures. Our learning pathways would be different, but both would point in the direction of improvement.

If it’s that straightforward, why isn’t this the reality in all schools? Well, for starters, it’s hard. It takes time to put together a high-quality learning experience for teachers. It requires knowledge of research-based best practices, as well as familiarity with adult learning theory. Even with this knowledge, busy principals rarely have time to create individualized plans to meet the needs of each staff member. Consequently, schools default to an awkward one-size-fits-all approach to staff development.

It doesn’t have to be this way. There’s growing momentum around the idea of personalized learning for teachers.

District of Columbia Public Schools are rethinking their entire approach to teacher professional development. They give teachers the opportunity to select, from several options, the topic on which they want to focus and the format through which they prefer to learn. Teachers might complete online modules on student engagement, request individual support from a school-based instructional coach, or participate in collaborative coaching cycles with a district-based content expert. Choice, they have found, increases teacher investment in the learning experience.

Another example comes from the Teacher Retention Project, based in Phoenix. They allow teachers to set their own learning goals for the year, such as improving lesson pacing or asking higher-level questions. Trained coaches then work closely with teachers to create individual plans to meet their needs.

A few miles away, the Sanford Inspire Program team of “teacher educators” is tackling this problem at my workplace, Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. With support from philanthropist and social entrepreneur Denny Sanford, we are creating a series of On-Demand Modules that address the need for targeted, relevant professional development. By keeping the topic for each module very narrow (e.g., an entire module is dedicated to teaching classroom procedures to students), teachers can select the online lesson that aligns to their area of need, without having to sit through material they already know.

We’ve designed our materials to be highly applicable, modular, and compatible with most teacher evaluation frameworks. Principals can implement On-Demand Modules as part of an ongoing staff development plan, directing individuals or teams to specific lessons. Teachers can access online content anytime, progressing through the content at their own pace.

In this model, the role of a principal shifts. Rather than spending time researching and planning content for staff professional development, she can focus on providing follow-up coaching support as teachers practice and refine a new strategy.

While we are still early in development, the response from teachers and teacher educators has been overwhelmingly positive. For example, after completing a module, one teacher said, “Some of the meetings we have to attend are very dull. I felt like this wasn’t and I could take more things away from it.”

With education spending down and budgets being cut across the country, we need to use limited dollars efficiently. It’s time to get smarter about teacher professional development.