Professional Learning Community
What is it?
What is a Professional Learning Community?
A professional learning community is when all teachers begin taking the statement " Learning for all" literally (DuFour, 2004). The staff has to be able to come together to collaborate to make each individual student important and help them succeed academically. When a staff decides to make this shift towards learning, great things begin to take place. As the school moves forward, every professional in the building must engage with colleagues in the ongoing exploration of three crucial questions that drive the work of those within a professional learning community: (DuFour, 2004)
- What do we want each student to learn?
- How will we know when each student has learned it?
- How will we respond when a student experiences difficulty in learning? The professional learning community responds to students with learning difficulty in a different manner than those of a traditional school. They believe that by applying a systematic, timely directive intervention program to students with learning difficulty is the best way to insure their success. Teachers that are in a professional learning community also know that working as a team is the best way to insure the success of each student. They understand that by sharing strategies and ideas that it helps the students succeed academically. A professional learning community judges their effectiveness on the basis of results(DuFour, 2004). They work together to analyze the results and break them apart to see which areas each student is struggling in. Then they come up with a plan specifically for that student as a team. Professional learning communities embrace the data from assessments. Through hard work and commitment to our students we can become a part of a professional learning community.
What a Professional Learning Community is not
A professional learning community does not give up on students that struggle in academics, rather they do everything in their power to make them succeed. They do not work alone, they work together to make sure that every student is where they need to be academically. Professional learning communities do not make excuses for their student's results in assessments, instead they collaborate where the student is struggling and initiate a plan.
Major Goals and Purpose of a Professional Learning Community
- To insure every student succeeds academically
- To come together as a team to make sure every student is being reached academically
- To learn from data, not make excuses for it
- That "learning is for all"
By: Kimberley Lanmon
CUR 520
January 19, 2015