RSA #5 From teaching to learning

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RSA # From a focus on teaching to a focus on learning

There have been many cultural shifts in professional learning communities. There has been a shift in purpose, assessments, responses to when students don’t learn, work of teachers, focus, culture, and professional development (DuFour, 2010). Regardless of the shifts, educators will remain the most important resource to ensure that every child is receiving what he/she needs. There are many challenges teachers are faced with today but PLC will help in the battle and provide every student with a quality education. PLC’s shift the focus from teaching to learning.  It moves away from what is taught to student’s demonstrating their proficiency.  The traditional form of trying to assess everything becomes more limited to assessing frequently, but only a few things. Instead of thinking remediation, assessments move to intervention. Good leadership practices are a must! A PLC provides solutions an educator needs to address challenges facing schools today (Moore, 2010). 

The transition from a traditional middle school where content level teachers work in isolation becomes obsolete (Honnert, 2010).  Collaboration and good leadership is a must in a PLC framework.  PLCs have also shown promise to meet the challenge of No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (Gillespie, 2010).   The shift in focus on issues outside of the school becomes an internal focus on steps the teachers can take to improve the school. The most important factor is the shift from learning and working individually to learning and working collaboratively with a commitment to limited focused initiatives. 

RSA #3 Common Planning Time

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Interdisciplinary is crucial in a PLC school. Teams of teachers need to have quality time to meet to discuss curriculum, common assessments, outcomes, and essential questions.  According to Cook (2010), curriculum alignment, development of common assessments and student assessment are key functions of the professional learning community planning time.  Since the 60’s the discussion of common planning in middle school has been a “hot” topic.  However, the effective use of common planning time is very limited in some schools. Unfortunately, l am only able to meet with my subject area teachers four times a year.  There have been other opportunities to meet, but only for a short amount of time.  This is not enough time to implement or fully integrate the philosophy behind the PLC.

What I have found in my team meetings is that we sit around and complain about student behavior or school policies. We all rant or vent about the negative issues we have to deal with instead of having a productive meeting about student learning.  There is no common content or objectives to be shared, so in turn we focus on the one thing we have in common, the students (DuFour, 2010).  So we can sit around and discuss why Mary has a “bad attitude” in math class, but that does not determine Mary’s skill level or knowledge.  Again, it becomes a run around discussion about why Mary has a bad attitude instead of student performance, growth, and assessment.

The best team structure is a team who teach the same grade level subject. These teachers have a common interest in exploring the critical questions of learning (Daring-Hammond, Wei, Richardson, 2006).  There is on-going research that indicates that common planning, teachers working together, leads to improved student performance and achievement.  Having the opportunity to share ideas, outline ideas and compare assessments and student progress opens the door to all students receiving the most appropriate instruction (Cook, 2010). Teachers are able to learn different strategies and techniques and collaborate about student outcomes.