Thursday, June 28, 2007
Why we do what we do~
Greetings to all! Hope you are enjoying your summer, and have taken some time for yourself and your family! As we draw closer to the beginning of our 07-08 school year, I hope you are preparing your mind for all of the thinking we are going to have to do concerning our professional learning community. I know that when I think of PLC, that's really what I think of: I'm going to have to really decide why I teach, and what I need to do to become a better teacher so that my students become learners! On a positive note, I'm actually very excited to do that. I always feel really crummy when I'm teaching without purpose. I hope that we can all use this blog as a tool for collaboration and a resource center for PLC ideas. This is a quick place to share your feelings and ideas, and get feedback from others. Would you like to share the things that you are worried about as we start our endeavor towards a professional learning community? I know that although I am really excited about the theory behind PLC, I am a little nervous about how it is going to be played out amongst us. Will everyone jump on board? Will some be anti-collaborators? Will our norms really help us to form a good group? What do you think?
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19 comments:
Hello Erin! Yes summer is being fun, and I too have high hopes for the PLC. I know that you all have been my best resorces for everyting,...experience by far the best teacher... so I really think us all having the opportunity to share regularly will be awesome!
I am really excited about PLC and the blog. Sharing ideas together and working together to improve student achievement is really going to help us and our students. Change can be scary, but we are going to go through it together.
It is good to see Sember on the blog already.
I love fireworks. I really like the fountains, tanks, and bottle rockets! I shot off many fireworks over the past three days.
I think it's GREAT our building is going to use it as a teacher FORUM to discuss ideas; it suits PLC well!
Some of the eMINTS classrooms have used edublogs.org with students in the classroom. Great for com arts, and is a SAFE and USER friendly site to use with students and adults alike. It is an edu site so it was designed with learning in mind.
Brandon- should've got Saturn Missles too!
Yay for intermediate blogging! Good work Erin!! Way to get things moving!
I am soooo proud of Erin and Shawn for getting this going. What a wonderful way to share. Thanks to you both!!
Susan
This is a neat idea. It gives a platform for everyone to voice their opinions. Even "non-techie" people like me can use it...Awesome!!
Hey 5/6 folks!
Glad to see you on the blog-wagon! I see you have linked to the elementary PLC blog- that's great! I know that each building will be on their own PLC path, but these blogs can help us stay connected as a district. I will link to your blog as well, and let's continue to keep track of each other as we figure this whole thing out! Way to go Erin and Shawn...BLOG ON!
While doing some eMINTS research last spring, Mrs. V (3-4 bldg.)and I came across the same PLC website. She has really looked into it and found great stuff. She put the website on the elementary's blog; I thought I should include it on ours. PLC practitioners Dr. Richard DuFour, Dr. Robert Eaker and Rebecca DuFour regularly contribute to this blog. Thought you might like to do a little research get ideas from it.
http://www.allthingsplc.info/wordpress/
Betsy, Mary & I are at the Differentiated Instruction conference in IN learning great stuff!! Super instructional and technology ideas; we'll be sharing when we get back.
Betsy almost crashed the PLC conference.... but instead sat through the 'hideously boring' Read Naturally session. (All other sessions were awesome).
Signing off from our sweet suite in beautiful downtown Indianapolis!!
Sember, Mary, & Betsy
(Mary & Betsy like sparklers and snakes!)
We are zooming in from Indianapolis with our daily blog. Betsy, Sember, and I are discussing what we learned today in our DI workshops, and wanted to share some our favorites. Thanks for all the prior knowledge with the lit model to help us better understand talking through texts, developing vocabulary, and an awesome management speaker. We even learned some new ways to handle the stinkers. We weren't underachievers today! We can't wait to start the lazy readers club! See you all soon!
With my grandmother's passing this summer and having to help my mom clean out her house and memories(lots of laughing, crying, and laughing some more), I have not been home in 33 days! On a good note, this is the first in over 7 years that I have not thought about the next school year over the summer. Grandma's passing and some one-on-one time with God (I know we are not supposed to talk about him at school, sorry) has given me a new perspective on life. But it is now time to think about school again, or all the boxes looming in my empty new classroom. I want to be honest and say that I am incredibly nervous and wonder every day if I made the right decision. Starting a new year with semi-new colleagues and PLC is very daunting and a little scary. I want my new PLC team to know that I will probably just sit back for a while to observe. It is not because I don't want to jump right in, but a new team is a little intimidating. Just remember to bear with me as I adjust. And if anyone wants to help unpack boxes....room 105 needs some serious help! Enjoy the rest of the summer everyone and thanks Erin and Shawn for getting this blog up!
Brandon, I have a billy goat for sale if you are interested.
Natalie - funny seeing you here, I figured you'd be trying to sell him some sparklers tonight!
I, too, am excited to see how the PLC model will better our school district. I was wondering if anyone has visited with local schools who are already doing the PLC model. I know that Hollister and Spokane have been involved in the model for some time, and someone told me that Reeds Spring has too. I thought that since we are teaching kids from the same area, that we benefit from hearing some of their triumphs and struggles. Any chance they might come and speak to us? Gotta run...too much to do in my classroom!
Shari-
The leadership team members will be visiting a school that has a well established PLC setup in Sept. or Oct. Then interested others might get the chance to visit as well. More details to come.
We might want to look into what Spokane, Holister, and Reed's Spring are doing as well.
I think Shari has a good idea about using other local schools as a resource to see how they are benefitting from PLC. It seems as though we would be serving students with similar needs (poverty levels, high number of transfers, etc.). Those schools may be more helpful to us than the more affluent schools we seem to be trying to model, simply because they serve a demographic group that has more in common with ours. Also, on the elem.'s PLC site, they had a post from someone in Willard who said they had done PLC for 10 years - maybe another somewhat local resource we could use.
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