Professional Learning Communities

In our schools today, educators are continuously looking to improve their skills by participating in professional learning communities. Professional learning communities allow teachers to collaborate with one another and hear different perspectives on subjects or topics. Although schools across the country participate in professional learning communities, they are not at the same stage. The stage of development that a school is at is vital to a teacher leader because you want to be proactive, and improve and move to the next level. Other things to consider at your school is the technical culture, professional norms, and organizational policies. Building school-based learning communities are useful for the professional growth of teachers.

During this stage, a shared community of explanation is emerging to develop, and the teacher leadership roles broaden in this stage (McLaughlin & Talbert, 2006). At this point, teacher leaders can take charge and show their different leadership characteristics, and their ability to take on a variety of tasks. Similarly, the data moves from figuring out how to use it in the novice stage to managing it so it can be used in better ways (McLaughlin & Talbert, 2006). Something else that is interesting at this stage is where teachers find the knowledge and ideas. During this stage, educators become less reliant on external agents (McLaughlin & Talbert, 2006). The collaboration process between teachers is starting to come together at this

Learning communities are about professionals working collaboratively, along with teaching and learning from one another (Laureate Education, Inc., 2009d). In addition to culture, establishing norms is necessary for the learning community to be successful. Regardless of the class or program, teachers share a common commitment to their students, and that is to provide students learning opportunities. Furthermore, we have an ethical obligation to serve all students. Continuous learning is not just for students, but also educators. For example, to improve my skills and continue learning, my district offers a variety of workshops that will make me a better teacher. The organizational policies that school has in place can have a positive effect on the learning community. One thing that needs to be established is good communication among staff. For example, as a teacher leader, I often facilitate staff meetings instead my administrator. Organizing teacher leaders as mentors for new or first-year students is essential to the learning community because it introduces the new teacher to working together as a team, and the importance of the learning community. Similarly, according to our textbook, San Lucio’s math department provides new math teachers an experienced mentor plus a daily prep period so the beginning teacher can observe their colleague’s instruction (McLaughlin & Talbert,