RSA2: PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITIES CONTINUE

RSA 2: Professional Learning Communities, I chose this article as it is in support of educational reform via the use of PLCS and actually DuFour is cited quite often in the article. The url for this article is: http://www.amle.org/Research/ResearchSummaries/PLCs/tabid/2535/Default.aspx` . The article actually is also reinforcing that my district really is following the “formal PLC established guidelines.” Up until I read this article I had really no idea where “the four questions” that are listed every week on my school’s newsletter came from. Our news letter includes every week: Student achievement: focus all the teaching and learning on these four big questions: * What is it we want students to learn? * How will we know when they have learned it? *How will we respond when student’s don’t learn it? * How will we respond when students already know it? It is interesting to me to see that my district is actually following the steps of being a successful PLC, but I am not sure how many of the administrators and teachers know it. I know I certainly had no idea that the “incentives” we have been using the past two years were directly tied to an education reform that is taking place throughout the country! I may also have more empathy for my principal as he really is the gatekeeper to change. He is only in his second year as an administrator and many teachers are not on board with all these “changes” taking place and how really important and needed they are to change the apathy and same old same old that is not working. I can see that in our school, teamwork is happening within grade level teams (at least it is in ours and seems to be in all the others as faculty meetings, and professional developments are taking place; but I can see where our school has a need to improve in all of us working as equals. I have actually started running my classroom as a PLC! It seems to really be working. Although my 4th grader’s collaboration time is much more than my colleagues and I get to spend together, they really enjoy the working together and it is building community. We go back and assess the learning we have done and give our community as a whole a grade for each part of our learning community. Are we learning? YES DEFINITELY! We listed all we learned last week and it was amazing! Are we a community, yes we are. We are not completely there yet on the community being what it needs to be; but the great thing is the students KNOW it. We discuss, what we need to be doing to make our community better (working toward the learning without bickering, etc.). Lastly, are we professional? There is where we really still need to work! It is so cool though that they even are at the point of knowing what professionals are. They have to learn to work quietly within their communities, and show professionalism at all times not only in the classroom but also in the common areas of the school and so on. I am really hope they get there. I do offer a lot of incentives with them when they following all the steps to success. It has been a fun way to begin the school year and I will continue to use it throughout the year.

Resources:

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.

 Caskey, M. M., Andrews, P. G., Bishop, P. A., Capraro, R. M., Roe, M., & Weiss, C. (2010). Research and resources in support of This We Believe (2nd ed.). Westerville, OH: National Middle School Association.