professional learning communities: collaborative brain power!
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Professional Learning Communities: Collaborative Brain Power!. Presented by: Amanda English and Erin Kanouse. What is a Professional Learning Community or PLC?. - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
Professional Learning Communities:
Collaborative Brain Power!Presented by: Amanda English and Erin Kanouse
What is a Professional Learning Community or PLC?
The professional learning community is seen as a powerful staff development approach and beneficial strategy for school change and improvement. It incorporates collaborative learning among colleagues in similar fields or environments. –SEDL.org
When you walk into a school (or group) that is functioning as a professional learning community, you have a sense that people understand what is important, what the priorities are; and they are working together in a collaborative way to advance the school toward those goals and priorities. -Lunenberg
How is this Different than a Staff Meeting?
Staff Meeting:
run by the administrator
Less input and sharing by staff
Usually talking about laws and regulations, deadlines, but less regarding learning new skills
Only the district staff versus regional
Not specific to one field (VI)
Source: http://www.ncpublicschools.org/
Why are PLCs Important?
Supportive and Shared Leadership
Collective Creativity
Shared Values and Vision
Supportive Conditions
Shared Personal Practice
Supportive and Shared Leadership
In the PLC model, principals and administrators become part of the learning and sharing community for the good of the school or students. They are no longer seen as “all knowing.”-SEDL
Encouragement from our supervisors to participate in this type of structured learning/planning/sharing
Collective Creativity The old phrase “two brains are greater than one” really fits here!
Not reinventing the wheel! Saves time!
Tap into what others are trying
Brainstorm ways to teach a new/difficult skill
Expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire
Reflective Dialogue to allow staff to discuss specific students’ learning and identifying related issues and problems as well as reoccurring issues with students that have been shared over time.
Shared Values and Vision
Striving toward a common goal!
Creating Uniformity (Our services should look very similar):
Drop Box Documents/Checklists (Accessible to team)
Evaluations
Team discussions of Best Practice
Supportive Conditions
Rules of the Group
Everyone’s opinion is valid: No idea is a bad idea
All In!
NO Tech!
Positive
"Instead of looking for superheroes, we need to work collectively to help everyone be successful.“--DuFour
Shared Personal Practice
New Techniques
Sharing learned techniques from conferences
Best Practice
Tricks of the trade
Share Difficulties and Successes
Create Trust
“The formal and informal leaders have to be clear that the goal is collaboration and not competition," says Anne Smith. --Edutopia
How Do You Create a PLC?
Team Leaders were chosen by our administrator to guide and organize, but all team members play an equal role.
Determined needs (Brainstorm ideas)
Show First Meeting Ideas (Evernote)
Started establishing a list of what we wanted to accomplish
Share what our list looked like
Rules of our group
Set a date and KEEP THE DATE!
PLC Leaders’ Purpose
Develop meeting schedule once a month
Notes/ follow up after meetings
First meeting develop group norms
How do we want to function
Develop vision
Don't take on too much
Keeping the team on track
Focus on solutions not the problems
Give everyone a minute to get things off their chest and then, "I'm all in"
Possible norm- not checking phones and emails
Possibly assign roles (time keeper, someone who keeps you on task, etc.)
Have a set start and end time (maybe 2 hours?)
Example from our first meeting:
Topics Addressed During a PLC: Maintaining Confidentiality
• Using Evernote to keep a record of our PLC
• Confidentiality Questions on Note-taking Apps
• Glitches in transferring notes over
• Full team unable to access One Note
• Data Mining Concerns from Tech
Topics: Organization Project
Taking time to Organize our staff storage
Sorting through old and unused materials
Grouping like materials for easy retrieval
Labeling shelves
Basic Inventory to save money
Topics: Website
Staff updates
Administrator Contact
Overview and What is Visual Impairment
Resources
Challenges:
• Not Completing projects to fruition
• Ok to have multiple meetings on one topic
• We try to return back to our list of projects to allot time for it.
Team PLC Evolution
2 leaders to help plan and organize team
Group Brainstorms to determine our focus
Ever Changing to meet the team’s needs
Rotating roles (as presenters of topics)
Example (Latest endeavor will be to take components of our specialties and share them with each other in a 1 hour focused training)
Inviting special guests to help train and present to the group
Regional PLC We developed ours after a Town Hall Meeting with the Bureau (BSBP)
after questions were voiced from various ISDs staff.
Need for support: smaller organizations or isolated instructors
Share information from PD
Size of Group (Do not want to have too many, so all voices can be heard and you can accomplish tasks/solutions)
Send out Survey Monkey for Dates
Google Docs to create an agenda (anyone can add information)
Example of Regional PLC Topics from March Meeting
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P5hAGJQvx6OLy26XPGFRsiozg_Ff7K07M9CmuM3Ffsc/edit
VI Professional Learning Community (Word Doc)
Benefits versus Sacrifices Time commitment for learning increases cohesive plans for team and region
Sharing information with each other so all are up to date with current accurate information for when caseloads change
Reminds us we are part of a team and accountable
Helps get everyone on the same page
Problem solving as a team versus on your own
Get more information disseminated in a quicker fashion
Feel empowered and refreshed and ready to take on more when tackling it as a group.
Controversial Topics Lead to Learning
When they discuss a topic as potentially controversial as assessments, the team learns from each other. "We're not always on the same page and can have healthy disagreements," she says. "Rather than be defensive, we sit down and discuss." –Edutopia
Topics that one teacher thought to be taught well were discussed and methods for filling in the holes were discussed to create a better lesson.-Edutopia
This Says It All!
"Now, my colleagues and I are always going to each other for advice.“--Edutopia
How have PLCs impacted our VI team?
Developed
Drop Box for Frequently needed Forms, Checklists
Youth Low Vision, Driving with Bioptics, Tech Checklists,
We’ve Developed many of our own checklists
Quicker development of measurable IEP goals
Periodically reviewing caseloads to make sure people are feeling like their caseloads are manageable
More collaboration on challenging cases
One of our Checklists
Ready, Set, Jump Start YOUR Collaborative Brain Power!
Start your PLC today!
Resources
http://www.ncpublicschools.org/
http://www.sedl.org/change/issues/issues61.html
http://www.edutopia.org/professional-learning-communities-collaboration-how-to
CREATING A PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITY, Fred C. Lunenburg http://www.nationalforum.com/Electronic%20Journal%20Volumes/Lunenburg,%20Fred%20C%20Creating%20a%20Professional%20Learning%20Community%20NFEASJ%20V27%20N4%202010.pdf
