Reading Reflection #2

1.) A learning community is basically summed up as a group (can be as small as two teachers) who collaboratively works together to solve problems to help better themselves as teachers. Essentially, they "learn how to learn together." There are three main focus points of Professional Learning Communities. The first focus is to ensure that the students learn. As a teachers, probably our most important job is making sure that our students actually learn what we teach them. The second focus is to create a culture of collaboration for school improvement. Collaborating with other teachers on teaching methods or strategies to control student behavior will help improve the school as a whole. The third focus is on results. After we instruct our students, it's very important to understand what they've actually learned from all the lessons.

2.) Professional Learning Communities often won't see success overnight. However, after the program has been in place for a couple of years, you will definitely start noticing some benefits. One benefit that you will see is an increased commitment to the mission of the school. Another benefit that you will notice is a higher likelihood of fundamental, systemic change where necessary. One last benefit that I will mention is that learning communities will unleash more powerful learning among the students. There's no doubt that creating a learning community in your school would be an excellent idea!

3.) Learning communities not only benefit the school as a whole, teachers are also able to reap benefits as well. Probably the biggest benefit that a teacher will experience from learning communities is decreased isolation. Normally, teachers have to teach all day by themselves with hardly any interaction with other teachers. This is not the case for learning communities! In a learning community, teachers collaborate with each other on a regular basis. This definitely helps keep the teachers sane. Along with enjoying interactions with other teachers, learning communities also benefit teachers by sharing responsibilities with each other. This does a great job of lightening the load for most teachers, which helps reduce stress. Overall, most teachers absolutely love the idea of creating learning communities at their schools!

4.) Students also reap some benefits from learning communities. Learning communities help students develop excellent collaboration skills. Since learning communities focus on interacting with each other and working together, they give the students a taste of the real world. In turn, this helps prepare students for life after school. Another benefit that student experience is more attention. In a typical classroom setting, it's quite easy for students to go unnoticed; sometimes students are even ignored. However, a learning community promotes a healthy classroom atmosphere with active participation and learning among all students. Overall, learning communities are very beneficial for students.

5.) There are many components for shared vision in learning communities; I'll discuss just a few of them. One component is members working together in collaborative teams to determine the best practice to achieve the mission. By working together, you're able to brainstorm countless ideas together. When you put a lot of great minds together, you're able to come up with some pretty amazing ideas. Another component is that members of the community can see themselves as life-long learners. By joining a learning community, you'll be able to learn learning strategies that will stick with you for the rest of your life. One last component of learning communities is that community members commit themselves to continuous improvement. Not only will this greatly benefit the school, this sense of commitment will probably end up spilling over into other areas of the teachers' lives. Since learning communities help create dedication in people, it's essentially making the world a better place!

6.) The whole concept of a learning community directly relates to our group project. Together, all four of us will work collaboratively throughout the semester on our unit on weather monitoring (GO WHIRLWINDS!). As we go through the process of creating lessons on different topics related to monitoring the weather, we'll all be learning how to learn together. The book says that communities can be as small as two people. Well, our community will be composed of four people. There's no doubt in my mind that all four of us will bring some excellent ideas, and some not so great ideas. By working together as one unit, a close-knit community, we'll easily be able to weed through the not so good ideas and combine each others good ideas to form amazing ideas. I'm excited to see The Whirlwind's learning community grow stronger over the course of this semester!