Principal Nicole Moore has recently attempted to get back to emphasizing the fundamentals of teaching at Indian Mills Elementary School to improve student learning levels across the board by implementing a “professional learning community.”
It is an ongoing process in which educators work collaboratively to conduct examinations and action research to achieve better results for the students they serve. PLCs operate under the assumption that the key to improved learning is continuous job-embedded learning for educators.
“The whole parameter is called professional learning community because we are looking to improve our teachers’ practice and student learning,” Moore said.
Indian Mills teachers involved in the PLC will now be guided by a clear vision of what the school must become to help all students learn. The community also focuses on the teachers continuously learning by having professional conversations about teaching strategies.
These teachers are working together interdependently to impact their classroom practice in ways that will lead to better results for their students and their school as a whole.
PLC has become very popular in schools, so much so that schools nationwide have been looking to put their own spin on it by renaming the idea to create what they believe to be a different “program.” However, these other programs oftentimes have the same core intentions as a PLC.
Also, the PLC process is not to be considered a “program.” It cannot be purchased or implemented by anyone other than the staff itself. It is a continuous, never-ending process of conducting schooling to impact the structure and culture of the school and the practices of the teachers within it.
In early September, Moore noticed her special area teachers — gym, arts and library, to name a few — had blocks of time outside of their specialist space that she wanted to utilize.
The idea for a professional learning community was actually brought to her by her son who is a student in the Mt. Laurel school district. Moore reached out to her colleagues in Mt. Laurel to get a better understanding of the concept and liked what she heard.
She decided to start the program with her oldest students and work down as the year went on and they grasped the concept better.
“We love our baby kindergartens, but they probably aren’t ready for this yet at this point in the school year, so we are going to hold off on getting them involved until later,” Moore said.
Right now, third and fourth graders are dropped off by their teacher for the hour of PLC in which a specialist teacher works with them on something similar to the class they are being taken out of. For instance, if the kids are dropped of by their social studies teacher, they will be working on something social studies related for that hour while their teacher collaborates with two other teachers on different learning strategies.
The first and second graders will be the next students to participate when the second marking period begins.
Moore emphasized that she did not want to control what teachers worked on in their classrooms for the assigned hour, so she gave them some leeway.
“They really took that and ran with it, delving into the idea and deciding what would be best for their grade level,” Moore said.
With the new Journeys reading program that was implemented this year still being new to everyone, it has become a popular topic of discussion in the professional learning communities.
“It was a perfect timing to implement the PLC to give third and fourth grade the opportunity to get together and discuss Journeys and give a sort of weekly assessment on the program in an attempt to make it more user friendly,” Moore said.
For the first time, fourth-grade teachers are exposed to third grade and visa versa. These cross-curricular connections have opened the eyes of these teachers to new ideas.
Moore said the biggest goal is to give teachers the opportunity to engage in professional conversations they typically don’t get to take part in because of the lack of time.
“There are more and more demands on these teachers now, but there is still the same amount of time in each day,” Moore said. “I saw this as an opportunity to give them a little more time to improve teaching and learning.”
The program has been a hit thus far as the teachers all raved about it at the last faculty meeting.
“I didn’t realize the magnitude of this until last faculty meeting,” Moore said. “For a half hour, we just talked about the art of teaching and teacher practices. They were totally engaged in wonderful discussions and excellent questions. For me, it was really enriching to have these conversations.”
