Thursday, January 7, 2010

Do You Work in a Professional Learning Community?

If you work in a PLC, perhaps you should review the 8 Laws Of Human Nature In A Professional Learning Community

I read these, posted on another blog I frequent Education Innovation.  The objective of a team working together may be pure, the actions of the individuals honorable, but still the work they try to do to help students learn can turn out incomplete or otherwise as they did not intend.

Rob Jacobs, author of the Education Innovation blog explains how PLC teams can veer off course in 8 easy to understand ways. If I were king for a day, I might make this required reading for all of our schools PLC teams at the end of this year AND at the start of next year. There may be some good reflection on team functions taking place as a result...

Wisdom like this, quoted from Jacob's post (HERE) is golden:

"Have you ever considered that the first person in a PLC to share an idea, their knowledge, their opinion, or give input to their Professional Learning Community may create a sequence of events that prevent the PLC from making the strongest most informed decisions possible?

and

"Teachers are often reluctant to share their ideas about effective instructional practices to meet the varying needs of students. Often they are afraid that they will be "wrong." Talking about page numbers and dates carries less risk. "

The PLC teams in our district are doing very well, but I sometimes wonder if enough time is spent developing the proper relationships in order to function effectively as a team. I know as a principal, I never had enough time to work with all of the teams, and other potential mentors were equally as busy.  Reflecting on these rules, and reviewing the vision for the teams, may be a very useful exercise!

As I always like to say, you do not have to be sick to get better!!!  (edit: Darn, I wish I could give credit to where I heard/read that phrase. If you have a source for who said it, let me know. I think it was W.E. Deming in a video I watched a long time ago, but I'm not sure...)

Cheers!

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