Friday, February 14, 2014

Taking a Step of Faith in to a Professional Learning Community


“The very essence of a learning community is a focus on and a commitment to the learning of each student. When a school or district functions as a PLC, educators within the organization embrace high levels of learning for all students as both the reason the organization exists and the fundamental responsibility of those who work within it.” – Rick DeFour, Bob Eaker, and Becky DuFour (2007)

One of my goals as an administrator is to initiate a Professional Learning Community on our campus. In fact we have our first PLC meeting set for February 18th. As I have researched the topic of successful PLCs, I have discovered there are many do’s and dont’s that contribute to a successful PLC.

Our first and most important goal for establishing our PLC will be for Collaboration. Too often, educators meet in the break room first thing in the morning for that important cup of coffee, and then retreat to their areas of isolation for the remainder of the day. In order for our campus to excel as a PLC we must move from isolation to collaboration.

One of our TCTW goals this year is creating student portfolios. Some instructors already do this well and some not at all. Hopefully, our PLC will provide collaboration of what a successful student portfolio might look like and what the best approach to achieving this campus wide project might be.

As mentioned earlier, a lot of educators are used to closing the door as the bell rings and attempting to solve the problems of running their programs on their own. Creating an atmosphere of Trust will be an integral part of the foundation of our PLC.

Every instructor has some type of Best Practice they utilize within their programs. We must be willing to trust one another, learn from each other and clear up the misunderstanding that our jobs are not to compete against each other as instructors but to collaborate for the over-all success of our students. We need to be willing and comfortable in sharing techniques that will help each other succeed with their students.

As we were planning our first PLC meeting we worked collaboratively in the office to allow Time, during the regular school day for our PLC group to meet. We in the office understand the hectic schedule of an instructor and want to ensure that our PLC does not add on any additional load. We will make every attempt to have your students covered when our PLC meets. Hopefully, we will become more creative in scheduling our PLC times as we look for additional times to collaborate.

The bottom line can best be summed up in a quote from James Cash Penney, who said “The best teamwork comes from people who are working independently toward one goal in unison.” As an instructor your goal is student success. We all have that goal. If we would take the time to tackle the problems we all share as a campus, support each other through the transitions ahead, trust each other and effectively collaborate for improved instruction, we can reach the goal of student success in UNISON!



2 comments:

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  2. Thank you Mr. Culwell for what you are doing on this campus! I guess this is not so hard if you can manage to hit the publish button instead of the delete.

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