RSA1: Professional Learning Communities: What are They and Why are They Important

RSA1:  “Professional Learning Communities:  What are They and Why are They Important”  

The article I choose is “PLC: What are They and Why are they Important,”   http://www.sedl.org/change/issues/issues61/beginnings.html, closely follows and supports DuFour and DuFour’s, Chapter 3, Creating a Focus on Learning.  Both state that it is extremely important that teachers are given structured time to work together in planning, observing each other’s classrooms and sharing feedback.

It supports that school leadership (administration, principals) have a great influence on the outcome of change within a school.  Being in a school that is attempting, I believe, to follow a PLC plan of some kind, I see where having a principal that is so thoroughly dominant and not willing, or ready or secure with the need for everyone to contribute can be the downfall of any successful learning community taking place at all.  Everyone must be playing on the same team and working towards common goals.  In one meeting he says he wants this to happen; but at every informal encounter, he suggests that it is not and we were not given any time last year to have collaboration time.  Collective creativity is focused on and it is stated that all people in the school collaborately and continually work together, from the custodians, bus drivers, cafeteria personnel to teachers and principal.  Such caring is supported by open communication made possible only by trust.

Time for all of this is probably the hardest thing to find to make sure this collaboration and shared thinking can all come together.  We are being told this year, we will be a data-driven school.  It is important that we assess and learn from our data, but it should never be the key and only factor running a school.  It should be used, more importantly to enhance a caring, productive educational environment.

References:

DuFour, R., DuFour, R., Eaker, R., & Many, T. (2010). Learning by doing: A handbook for professional learning communities at work. (Second Edition ed., pp. 59-153). Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

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Astuto, T.A., Clark, D.L., Read, A-M., McGree, K. & Fernandez, L. deK.P. (1993). Challenges to dominant assumptions controlling educational reform. Andover, Massachusetts: Regional Laboratory for the Educational Improvement of the Northeast and Islands.