Professional Learning Communities

Hello everyone,

The Principal and I have been having a series of discussions about Professional Learning Communities on campus.

The idea that teachers do a better job when they collaborate is one that has been around for some time. "Professional Learning Community" is a useful label to give such a collaboration, and since it happens to be the current coin of the realm, it is a label that we can use. I like the intended connotation that the "learning" is both delivered by the community (a collaboration of teachers, TAs, administrators and support staff) and received by the community. We learn, then we teach, then we review how we taught (working together, preferably), then we learn from our review or further research. The cycle continues. We make ourselves accountable to ourselves (and by extension to others), using the data that is given to us from each other, the district, and the state.

At Garfield, we face some obvious limitations to our ability to collaborate: we cannot dictate our school culture to the district; we cannot always count on common planning time; and our campus is enormous, both in size and population.

Still, we have some structures in place that have already made collaboration happen: we have our small learning communities and departments; we have staff development days and buy-back days; we have electronic communication; we have RSP and some other co-teaching situations. It is halting and sometimes haphazard, but it is happening in places.

I am interested in ways that you collaborate, and evidence you have that collaboration is working for better student achievement. If you write to me, we'll discuss it. There are some worthy ideas in books on Professional Learning Communities that the Principal is distributing. This is a good philosophy to explore in the waning days of the school year as we gear up for 07-08.

Jeff Combe