Ways to Promote Teacher-to-Teacher

Growth

Tori Gallo

Professional Learning Communities

• A model used to ensure student learning caused by a shift from focusing more on learning than teaching

• All members of the school should be active in order to be most beneficial

• Members respond to students with learning difficulties directly and help is based on intervention rather than remediation

• Results from common assessments are used to judge the effectiveness of set goals

Communities of Practice

• People who share a passion for something they do and want to learn to do it better through collaboration

• A global view of Professional Learning Communities

• Members have shared activities and relationships

• Meet and see each other regularly

Critical Friends Group

• 8-12 people who have similar interests and beliefs

• Are intended to form Professional Learning Communities

• Meet monthly to discuss relevant and current topics in their jobs and the field of education and turn these ideas into practice

Frameworks for Helping Disciplinary Issues

• Professional Learning Community- use to gather data from other teacher’s behavioral concerning students to see what type of interventions have worked for them

• Community of Practice- use to discuss techniques and share ideas with teachers of similar belief systems in hopes of decreasing behavioral issues

• Critical Friends Group- use to discuss and share ideas and strategies with teachers of similar interests and develop ways to put the ideas into practice in hopes of the ideas spreading school-wide

The One For Us

• Critical friends group is the one my teacher leadership group and I chose because we feel that our school is not strong enough to use the others quite yet

• We hope that by us (and a few others) joining together to strategize how to make the school a better place when it comes to correcting unwanted behaviors within the classroom, it will create a shift in our school and eventually a strong PLC will start to form

• We also plan to use data to help make this group stronger and lead it into becoming a PLC

References

• DuFour, R. (2004). What is a professional learning community?. Educational Leadership, 61(8), 6-11. Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/may04/vol61/num08/What-Is-a-Professional-Learning-Community¢.aspx

• Ban, Eric. (n.d.) Communities of Practice (Transcript to Presentation 3).