Professional Learning Communities

Co-teaching

In an article titled "Eight Tips for Making the Most of Co-teaching," Ariel Sacks, an eighth grade teacher from New York, talks about what co-teaching is, and some strategies that she has found to work best in her own classroom while co-teaching.  Sacks says that "co-taught classes—collaborations between general education and special education teachers—have become fairly common." The tips she gives also go along with the team teaching strategy that we talked about in class, and  I think would be very helpful for all teachers who plan on using this model in their classroom.  Her article includes helpful tips for time management, planning. creating a good flow, communication, and some awesome ways to make sure the students get the most out of the experience.  After reading about how well it worked for her, I would love to be able to use these tips for my own classroom in the future.  I think students could benefit from this so much and I wish more schools could do this.

Sacks, A. (2016, April 29). Eight Tips For Making the Most of Co-Teaching.  https://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2014/10/15/ctq_sacks_coteaching.html

By: Megan Farley



Professional Learning Communities

In the video "Creating a Professional Learning Community at Work: Foundational Concepts and Practices," Richard DuFour discusses the importance and effectiveness of Professional Learning Communities.  A PLC is a group of people (teachers, counselors, administration, resource teacher, etc.) who are working together to ensure that the students are learning as much as possible and that educators are teaching in a way that benefits each student the most.  DuFour points out that when schools were first introduced, they were one room school houses with one teacher responsible for all of the student's learning.  While we are no longer is one room school houses, we do often still see one teacher being isolated and responsible for all of their student's learning, leading to students not getting the most effective education possible.  Professional Learning Communities can solve this problem as it allows for teachers to work together collaboratively in order to work together to meet the demands that are being placed on schools today.  I had not thought of this reference to past schools before, but it is a very valid point in favor of PLC's.  Our schools are growing, so why shouldn't the amount of professionals working to help students grow, too?

“Creating a Professional Learning Community at Work: Foundational Concepts and Practices.” YouTube, 4 Jan. 2013, youtu.be/FLGHY9-sibA.

By: Vanessa Gripshover

 The listed resource below is a program called Learning Forward. This website has resources and
services for professional development but also has standards for professional development.
All good teachers know the value of high expectations and standards. Therefore, teachers should
include include professional standards for their learning communities. There are also events which
teachers can commit to attending and learning together. PLCs cannot do everything on their own. Not
every situation or issue can be fixed with just simple steps or a good story, even though those are
great places to start. Therefore, a resource with varied supports, widely collected data, and ongoing
development is highly valuable to PLCs. These large educational communities are a great way to
learn what characteristics are important for a local PLC.

Learning Forward.org (2018) “Home Page”. Retrieved (2018, Feb 16) from:  
https://learningforward.org/

By Emily Stork



Co-Teaching

In the article “Successful Co-Teaching”, Wendy Murawski outlines how to be a successful co- teacher along with how to get started with co-teaching in your classroom. One of Murawski’s main points for successful co-teaching revokes around laying the groundwork for co-teaching. “They are putting two teachers in the room in an “arranged” marriage, with no time for teachers to get to know one another, to learn how to co-teach, and to establish norms, goals, and expectations that both can embrace”, Murawski says this is why laying the groundwork is so important. If you haven’t formed some type of relationship with your partner, then there’s no way both partners with be on the same page when teaching in the classroom. She lists several things administrators can do to help form the bonds of teachers so co-teaching will run smoother in the classroom for example: provide professional development for faculty or scheduling common planning times fro teachers to collaborate. Along with this she explains how may teachers and schools don’t know how to get started co-teaching. She lists different steps to take to get started with co-teaching in school’s form planning to collaborating. After reading this article my outlook on co-teaching has grown because I now know how to start co-teaching in my own classroom. I think more schools and teachers should read this resource because it gives them insight on successful co-teaching.

Murawski, W. “Successful Co-Teaching” Retrieved (2018 Feb. 16) from https://www.cec.sped.org/News/Special-Education-Today/Need-to-Know/Need-to-Know-CoTeaching

By: Lexie Richardson