Facilitating a Professional Learning Community
In last month’s article, I discussed what professional learning communities are and how they benefit educational organizations. In this month’s follow up, I want to share my own personal journey of facilitating an instructional technology professional learning community, at Ware County High School, where I have taught for the last twelve years. When planning and developing a professional learning community, facilitators should recruit administrative buy in, plan to assess the learning needs of the community, and create a plan to share leadership.
Beginnings
Ware County High School’s last accreditation walkthrough was performed by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) during the 2015–2016 school year. Overall, the evaluation team gave WCHS high marks, however student-centered use of instructional technology was identified as a growth opportunity by the visiting SACS team. The following year, I began participating in a professional learning community, called Innovative Classrooms, sponsored by the Okefenokee Regional Educational Support Agency, the focus of which was the integration of student-centered instructional technology.
After attending the first session of this professional learning community at Okefenokee RESA, I knew that I wanted to replicate the community at Ware County High. The timing of the recent SACS evaluation and the development of the professional learning community at Okefenokee RESA were impeccable, as I was able to use the data from the SACS evaluation to support the implementation of WCHS’s very own Innovative Classrooms PLC. Excitedly, I approached my school principal and was not disappointed.
Year 1
Facilitating a professional learning community was a new adventure for me. While I had been a teacher for numerous years, I did not have a lot of experience facilitating adult education and was a bit nervous. Unlike many content specific professional learning communities, in which participation can be mandated by school leaders, the Innovative Classrooms PLC is voluntary in nature. To develop the interest of my colleagues, I recruited my school principal, Mr. Bert Smith, to participate in a public relations campaign. As the lead learner of our school community, Mr. Smith’s endorsement was essential to developing energy and excitement among my colleagues.
After engaging in the public relations campaign, I also surveyed my colleagues to determine what types of instructional technology they wanted to develop proficiencies in. Survey results indicated a clear dichotomy of experience levels among my colleagues: those who already demonstrated strong proficiencies integrating instructional technologies, along with those who were novices.
Assessing the learning needs of the participants has become a critical component of my yearly planning routine as I continue to facilitate this professional learning community.
The first year of the PLC was a huge success. On average, I had around thirty colleagues attend the monthly morning sessions. Over the course of that first year, we discussed strategies such as student blogging, using Google Docs, Google Slides, and other G-Suite Apps to facilitate student-centered learning. Also, more teachers at Ware County High started developing class web pages and blogs to expand instructional outreach. To document the first year of the technology PLC, I created a Microsoft Sway so that I could share the success of my colleagues with our entire district.
Year 2
Over the course of the first year of the professional learning community, several of my colleagues developed into exemplary teacher leaders in the context of instructional technology. These colleagues were passionate about their jobs and students; they were enthusiastic when integrating technology; perhaps most importantly, they were hungry for more. Their enthusiasm inspired me not only improve the quality of our professional learning community but also to continue in my personal journey of professional growth.
Year two of the Ware County High School Innovative Classrooms PLC focused on developing the leadership qualities of the more active teachers and provide training and assistance to the burgeoning users of instructional technology. I have come to distinguish these two categories as Leaders and Learners. Allowing the Leaders to facilitate some of the monthly meetings was an opportunity to share leadership of the learning community with others while developing the proficiencies of both the Leaders and Learners.
Surveying the instructional technology dispositions of my colleagues was a critical component of the planning process. I used the results of the survey to determine what types of professional development sessions to offer. I then matched the needs of the Learners with proficiencies of the Leaders to determine which session each Leader would facilitate. This strategy has proven to be an effective method of providing for the learning needs of all learners while sharing leadership of the community with my colleagues.
Sustaining the Learning Process
As year three of the learning community dawns, I am very excited about the momentum our PLC has developed and even more enthusiastic about the future of the Innovative Classrooms Community. To foster more buy-in from our school leaders, I have worked closely with the school’s instructional coach to ensure that the technology PLC is prominently mentioned in Ware County High School’s School Improvement Plan, or SIP. The SIP is a guided plan that defines what targeted actions a school will take to improve student achievement. Not only does the plan define the actions that a school will take, the plan also guides schools in how allotted monies are spent.
Incorporating the professional learning community in the School Improvement Plan ensures that appropriated monies will be spent to support the technology PLC. For example, I and four colleagues will be attending the Future of Education Technology Conference in Orlando, Florida in January 2019. Also, our school will be sponsoring the affiliation of five PLC participants with the International Society of Technology in Education (ISTE). Including these initiatives within the School Improvement Plan guarantees that funding will be provided for these adult learning initiatives.
Finally, our local Board of Education has decided to provide more personnel to support the goals of the Innovative Classrooms PLC. We now have a full-time instructional technology specialist who is available to provide one-on-one support for all teachers. To increase awareness among our colleagues of this additional support, Year Three of the learning community will feature “theme” months.
Each month during the 2018–2019 school year, the Innovative Classrooms PLC will offer “themed” professional development regarding instructional technologies that teachers at WCHS identified in the annual Instructional Technology Needs Assessment Survey. Each month, our technology Leaders will facilitate a short professional development focussing on one technology. For example, our first theme will be “Google Drive”.
These morning sessions will then be followed up by 15 -20 minute sessions, facilitated by the full time instructional coach, offered to teachers during their planning period on the same day. Follow up sessions will focus on the same instructional technology but more detailed strategies for implementing the tech. For the “Google Drive” theme, the morning session will provide teachers with basic instruction on how to create, organize, and share files in Google Drive.This beginner level session will be followed up planning period sessions whose focus of instruction will be on the more advanced settings of Google Drive.
Conclusion
Facilitating the Innovative Classrooms Professional Learning Community has been a fantastic opportunity for me to develop as a teacher leader. Initially, I was nervous about facilitating the PLC as it represented my first school wide leadership role. Looking back, I recognize that a great deal of my anxieties resulted from personal perceptions regarding my colleagues dispositions toward the community.
I wanted my colleagues to have positive feelings towards our learning community. Did they think it was useful and relevant? What would our PLC focus on in future sessions? Were they excited or disappointed after leaving each session? To help address these concerns, I began administering a Technology Needs Assessment Survey at the beginning of each year.
The information collected from the Needs Assessment Survey facilitated the design of training sessions that were both relevant and meaningful to the majority of PLC participants. It soon became evident however, that I would need to provide more extensive opportunities for the advanced members of the learning community. It was from the needs of these advance learners that I developed the concept of Leaders and Learners.
To support the learning needs of the Leaders, I needed to facilitate opportunities for them to not only integrate instructional technology, but to develop themselves as professional leaders. One method that I found to be effective in supporting these needs is to provide Leaders with opportunities to participate in professional conferences and in sharing the responsibility of facilitating the Innovative Classrooms Professional Learning Community.
Facilitating this PLC has been a process of trial and error. I don’t believe that their is a one size fits all strategy for facilitating learning communities.
Each community and its learning needs are as unique as the individual participants, however, I have found that developing administrative buy-in, assessing the learning needs of the community, and sharing leadership of the community are strategies that will lead to effective learning communities.
Editor’s Note:
Everytime I hear or read the words “PLN” and “PLC”, they fill me with excitement. Education is a social profession where it is a given that we interact with and teach students. On top of that, colleagues are a huge social element in themselves and without these communities and networks, we might loose the enthusiasm of being in the classroom and being learners ourselves.
I learn something new from every article in A Teacher’s Hat and I realized as I read Aaron’s article, how much the writers and the community we are a part of together means to me. Every educator I interact with has something to teach me that I can take to my classroom in some form. Whether it is reading an article or listening to a podcast or reading a sketchnote, we learn together and find ways to better our students’ learning.
