Building a Professional
Learning Community
by Alisa Baldwin
As a Teacher Leader, do I feel a need to bring new ideas to teachers? This question was presented to me during the Summer Institute. My instant response was “Yes, I do feel obliged to bring new ideas, strategies, best practices, and current research to the staff each year”. But as the week advanced, I began to think more intensely about that question. I started thinking should I be the only one bringing new ideas? I am not the storehouse of knowledge. There are twenty other educators in the building. If we collectively came together as community, imagine how much knowledge and resources would be in one room to affect the students’ learning. During grade group meetings this school year, I want to be more of a facilitator and not be seen as the deliverer of knowledge. I want teachers to be more than consumers of information. I envision grade group meetings to be a place for professional conversation, writing, and reflection. I want teachers to have a voice and I want to hear their voices.
A question that I pose is, “How can I build a professional community among teachers in my school?” Usually during grade group meetings and professional development, I am giving teachers much information to use in their classrooms. This year I would like to build a collaborative grade group meeting, where teachers come together to share and discuss students’ writing. This will also be a place where teachers can receive suggestions on the next moves to take in order to improve their students’ writing. Teachers will be encouraged to bring research and findings that help shape and foster their writing projects. My responsibility will be that of a facilitator in which I will provide protocols and share my resources. My expectation is to be part of the professional community and let teachers adopt and adapt protocols to fit their community. As I reflect on my professional development over the past year, I realize that I might have been silencing teachers. I knew that there were teachers who were going to graduate school for a Reading Specialist Certification and one teacher pursuing a Principal Certification. Why didn’t I ask them to share the articles or new strategies they were using in their classes? This year I want my teachers to develop “vision-based professional voice.”
Originally, my plan was to focus on school-wide narrative writing for September and October. However, after reflecting on questions from my writers’ workshop group in the Institute, I decided to spend September building collaborative professional communities. One of the members in my writing workshop group suggested that I incorporate a Quick Write during our first meeting focusing on the teachers’ thoughts and plans for writing this year. Each teacher can keep a journal for recording thoughts about professional development. If teachers are collaborating, sharing and receiving feedback from colleagues, and coming together as a professional community, imagine the impact it would have on our students’ writing and learning.
Alisa Baldwin is a School Based Teacher Leader at the Pennell Elementary School. Alisa joined the Philadelphia Writing Project in 2014 after attending the Summer Institute.