Factors Approach To The Professional Learning Community In The Classroom

Once the team’s vision had been established, we became very honest about our personal and professional strengths and our target areas of growth. From this conversation, the team was able to clearly define the focus and responsibilities of the PLC Leader and individual team members. The meeting was successful and everyone is excited about working together. Our vision will remain in the forefront of our meetings, reminding us to always provide a climate in our classrooms that fosters thoughtful and respectful consideration of all viewpoints.

In conclusion, for the most part, the members of the PLC worked collaboratively and cooperatively toward the goal set by our department. Even though, we have not received feedback on all of the activities we have planned, we are happy with the results so far. We’d like to see our scores continuously raise each year and for our students to be better prepared for the next level, as well as, come to the tenth grade with stronger skills. Checking for alignment with the standards and adjusting are key to making everyone

The professional learning community will develop the steps of transforming our schools. It will use these eight steps as professional development protocols in reducing the dropout rate and increasing college and career readiness.

Professional Development measures the degree to which teachers value continuous personal development and school-wide improvement.

For the Professional Learning Community (PLC) experience, I chose to observe a PLC. For this assignment, I observed an eighth grade English PLC. This PLC was comprised of three English teachers and one student teacher. There was not a written agenda for their PLC, but they seemed to have an order to how their meeting was held. The began by discussing the unit that they were completing which was using Greek Mythology to review and analyze student’s reading comprehension and summary writing abilities. They stated that their students seemed to be really interested in the unit and did well with the reading comprehension. However, they had noticed that some students were forgetting to state the title and author of the text within the summary and most summaries lacked elaboration, but most students were knowledgeable about the basic structure of a summary. As most students understood the basic structure, they decided that they were going to transition onto the next unit which focused on informative essay writing, but modify the unit in order to teach students the importance of including the title and author within a summary and

PLCs are an ongoing process in which educators work collaboratively in recurring cycles of collective inquiry and action research to achieve better results for the students they serve (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, & Many, 2006). The PLCs should be crafted around the idea of cultivating a sense of shared responsibility between all stakeholders.

Roberts, S. & Pruitt, E. (2003). Schools as Professional Learning Communities: Collaborative Activities and Strategies for Professional Development. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

I approach collaboration as a team player, and I believe students need more than one person to guide them to their full educational potential. Also, active and prepared participation of weekly PLC meetings with the teachers of my special education students to plan collaborative curriculum have increased results in math and reading substantially. Participating in co-teaching furthers my repertoire of knowledge to assist my students. I have learned a vast amount from sharing and consulting with colleagues regarding students, observing mentoring teachers, and planning activities to ensure growth in students.

I have contributed to the professional growth of my colleagues by being an active member of my PLCs. I am the U.S. History PLC Leader for the first semester of this school year. I have created all the meeting days and times, and lay out agendas for those meetings. We use Google Classroom to stay in contact with one another, collaborate, and share thoughts and ideas.

Furthermore, I feel confident in asserting that Park Middle School represents many, if not all, of the aspects expected from a collaborative culture. Overall, when reviewing the School Culture Typology Activity and protocol described by Steve Gruenert and Todd Whitaker, statements with the survey that reflects a “collaborative culture” certainly resonated with me. There were two components of the survey that caught my attention. First, there is certainly an openness amongst staff as well as administration. We are committed to openly discussing our practices and working together to make decisions that improves our practice. Secondly, our school promotes and provides opportunities for professional development, not only outside of school but every

Traditionally, teacher development typically occurs through trial and error in the isolated confinements of each teacher’s classroom with some periodic whole-group professional development (Goddard & Goddard, 2007). Within the past few decades, many schools and districts, including ours, have considered and experimented with Professional Learning Communities (PLC) as an alternative framework in guiding a more efficient development program for their teachers. PLCs are focused on enhancing student learning through developing teacher practices. The concept of PLC relies on using structured collaborative sessions amongst teachers within the school to build internal capacity. Through PLCs, teachers critically reflect on current

During my second preclinical experience at Westview Hills Middle School, I learned the importance of cooperation and collaboration among teachers at a school. I was able to observe team and department meetings during this experience. It became clear that it is important for teachers to work together in order to provide a positive atmosphere at a school and in a specific department. Although it became obvious that personalities and teaching styles were different throughout the school, the teachers still acted professionally and used each other as resources in

Over the years, school districts have broadened their perspective on community learning, and now we are encouraging principals to think building professional learning across early learning communities, Pre-K-4. ELPIC is framework of prekindergarten through fourth grade, or age three to grade four, follows the evolving growth and understanding of the knowledge presented and instructed to the students. This results in a span within a child’s entire learning continuum that elementary school principals have direct connections to and an opportunity to influence.

Administrators and teachers must work together to develop the PLC plan addressing the needs of their students. This means administrators need to trust teachers and allow them to work in a way that is autonomous from leadership. Delegating more responsibilities to staff was a way of creating a more knowledgeable community that could cope with the diversity of demands created by schools moving from being relatively simple organizations to highly complex ones. It was also recognized as in accord with the rhetoric of distributed leadership recommended as a strategy for school improvement and raising pupil attainment (Bolam et al. 2005, Webb, et al.

This goal did not appear to be farfetched in the planning stages. The teachers of Florence Middle School were engaged in a culture where subject area teams regularly planned lessons together. Furthermore, grade level teams were meeting once a month. These teams already had a history of clearly articulating their ideas, goals, and plans to the administrative team on initiatives other than the RTI process. On the outside looking in, it appeared professional learning communities (PLCs) were in place at Florence Middle