How to recreate professional learning communities

How to recreate professional learning communities.

Problem. In the wake of COVID, collaboration with teachers, especially subject-like, has almost disappeared. Collaboration directly impacts student achievement..

Use of intuitive thinking. “Intuition is a thought process, the result of which is understanding, learning or acquiring knowledge without the participation of rational reasoning,” ( Malewska , 2018). After 15 years of experience, my intuition points me in the direction of how to potentially solve this problem. “The ability to analyze a large amount of information and extract that which is essential with regard to a given decision makes it possible to implement a decision-making process,” ( Malewska , 2018)..

Intuitive thinking solution. A cartoon of a person with a flower in the hair Description automatically generated with low confidence.

Use of Analytical thinking & process. “Analytical thinking, at its core, is breaking down parts of a problem into atomic components (which can’t be broken down further), in order to study their parts and their relationships,” (American College of Education, 2015). Breaking down the parts of this problem shows that in a seven-and-a-half-hour professional development day, only one hour is devoted to departments. This further breaks down to a mere 13% of a professional development day that subject-like teachers can get together to collaborate (and that is if they choose to). “Just because an event is unlikely does not mean it is impossible,” (American College of Education, 2015). In working with the limited amount of time, it was necessary to discuss ahead of time to appropriately plan; this involved collaboration and understanding outside of normal work time together..

Analytical thinking solution. POSSIBLE SOLUTION: Each subject-like teacher produce a list of priorities at the current point of the school year. After the list is compiled, email it to other teachers to prioritize two to five items on the list. This narrowed list will highlight the collaboration talking points to ensure efficiency in the limited time given (13%)..

Inferences and conclusions based on evidence. Based off data collection and evidence from the last couple of years, it is clear a miniscule amount of time is spent together with colleagues collaborating. We know this has a negative impact on student achievement in terms of grades, SAT scores, college admissions and graduation requirements. The evidence shows that teacher collaboration has decreased in recent years which has shown a direct impact on student achievement..

Intersection of intuition and analytical thought.

reflection. The initial planned course of action is a good start but not an end point. It would be punitive to think that solid teacher collaboration for the benefit of students can occur during meetings at lunch time. This time could be best used developing a game plan for deep thought, collaboration and common planning on professional development days. These talks at lunch time will be meant for quick discussions and problems that have “easier” solutions; however, the deep meaningful solutions that will benefit student achievement will require more time. The evidence clearly shows that the need is there for teachers to get back to well functioning professional learning communities (PLC’s)..

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