One of the core concepts behind a PLC (Dufour, 2004) is
the idea that teachers need to collaborate.
Dufour (2011) brings up a great point in that many other professions and
jobs require employees to work together to achieve goals and that teachers
shouldn’t be an exception to that.
Teachers should be doing everything they can to help their students
learn, and getting ideas from other teachers seems to make sense in order to
achieve this goal at challenging schools in particular.
I was curious about how to do this beyond discussion, and
looked for specific strategies on what exactly teachers can do in order to
improve their instruction to increase student teaching. Discussion and sharing is great, but sometimes
merely discussing ideas isn’t enough; through experience I have learned that we
learn by doing. As I was researching, I
found an article that suggested teachers need to observe and help each other
out (Jewett, 2012).
In this article, Jewett (2012) addresses the hesitancy of
teachers to be coached by each other because they felt like evaluations. In order to overcome this, Jewett expressed
that as teachers resisted an expert/student approach and looked at things more
as co-learners, the process went smoother.
They were able to help each other rather than one teacher pouring into
another.
Quite frankly, I disagreed with this approach. While I do
feel that teachers can learn from each other, a better set-up would be for a
mentor-mentee approach, especially between seasoned and novice teachers. I would rather learn from an experienced
teacher I respect than someone who is in a similar place as me. While those conversations could be
beneficial, I feel I could learn quicker from a veteran.
Dufour, R. (2004). What
is a “Professional Learning Community”?. Educational
Leadership, 61(8). 6-11. http://staffdev.mpls.k12.mn.us/sites/6db2e00f-8a2d-4f0b-9e70-e35b529cde55/uploads/What_is_a_PLC._DuFour_Article_2.pdf
Dufour, R. (2011). Work
Together But Only if You Want To. Kappan
Magazine, 92(5), 57-61. http://www.kappanmagazine.org/site/misc/Kappan92_MustReads1.pdf
Jewett, P. (2012). Adding Collaborative Peer
Coaching to Our Teaching Identities. Reading
Teacher, 66(2), 105-110. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/TRTR.01089/abstract
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