I am in a Professional Learning Community.

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“The most valuable resource that all teachers have is each other. Without collaboration our growth is limited to our own perspectives.” – Robert John Meehan

Sometimes as an educator it feels as if the PLC ideal is unattainable. It is a nice thought, but executing a beneficial PLC seems impossible…especially with all of the other things you have to do! Hopefully this article will provide you with enough of a push in the right direction so you are able to finally catch the ever elusive, successful PLC! As someone who has been a part of more than one functioning, well-oiled PLC machine, let me assure that it is possible AND, most importantly, worth the investment. The benefits for you, your fellow teachers, and ultimately your students, are countless!

So, here are five quick tips to help you create a valuable PLC: kitchen_timer

  • Keep your PLC 30-45 minutes. Remember, this is not a time to socialise with one another or share the hilarious thing one of your students said that day. By all means, do those things and do them often…just not during your PLC. If your meeting takes over an hour, you might want to evaluate how much each teacher is taking away from the meeting.
  • Have a clear agenda. Nothing is worse than attending a meeting with no clear direction, right? The verbal processors are talking, the internal processors are brooding, the introverts aren’t saying anything, and the extroverts are making plans for the weekend! I, of course, say this in jest but I’m sure you have been to a chaotic meeting where most people don’t even know who is running the show. Know exactly where you are going with your meeting. If additional questions arise that require discussion, deal with them outside of the meeting or add them to the next agenda.
  • Come prepared. Whether you are expected to take notes to email to the other PLC members, bring student work, or have grades to share, be prepared. Don’t waste your time or the time of your fellow teachers by not being ready to get right down to business.
  • It doesn’t matter if you are a long-term sub, first year teacher, or a 30-year veteran, you have things to contribute. Don’t make the mistake of thinking the veteran teachers have all the answers, or the equally poor mistake of thinking newbies don’t have much to offer. Also, and this might be the most important part, all teachers should share the student work or grades they have been asked to bring! After all, the point of the PLC is collaboration.
  • Keep your focus on the students. Don’t think of your PLC as just another thing to do. Think of it as a way to hone your skill as an educator so student learning can increase, making them more successful. If you aren’t discussing outcomes and best practices, you are simply doing it wrong. While we do benefit from the PLC as educators, our students should be the ultimate beneficiaries.
  •  Trip to the Zoo Oct 2013

Please remember, this is by no means a comprehensive look at PLCs. Something like that could take a book, or three![1] This article is meant to help you identify where your PLC might be going wrong, what it is doing well, and, most importantly, to remind you of why they are so worth it!

Andrea M. Craddock, M.Ed.

School Services

TeachBeyond

 

Photo Credits:  Timer, kitchen_timer.jpg. SCS Bolivia TeachBeyond, 2015.

[1] For more information about PLCs, you can check out this website from ASCD, To see an example of a PLC in action check out this Youtube video. DuFour and Eakers are two well respected authorities on PLCs.  A number of books can be found written by them both together and with other authors.  If you don’t have time to read one of their books in full, here is a brief summary one teacher put together of the book Professional Learning Communities at Work.

Know their story

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I sighed inside as normally easy-going Jeremiah acted up for the fifth time that period. His behaviour was out-of-control and he had quickly taken the class with him to the point where no one was paying attention any longer. This was a fourth grade class, and I was a minority among hundreds of African-American students and teachers. Most of my students lived in government housing and tales of shootings, arrests, and drugs peppered their conversation every morning before school. I had been “adopted” by some veteran teachers who gave me tips and ideas on how to discipline while also sharing their stories of marching for equal rights in the 60s and being hosed down by the fire trucks during their peaceful protests. I was ashamed for my “whiteness,” but also very humbled that they were willing to come alongside and support me at the start of my teaching career.
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“Jeremiah, come with me,” I insisted after his third warning. “We are going to call your mother.” His surprised face and hurt eyes showed me he was disappointed in himself, but my repeated warnings had only resulted in his behaviour worsening. I picked up the phone outside the classroom. As I began to dial, Jeremiah unbuttoned his shirtsleeve and pulled it up over his forearm. My stomach churned as I saw the imprint of an iron on his arm—each steam hole represented by a blister. “What happened?” I asked as tears rose up in my eyes. His eyes shifted away as he mentioned the iron had fallen on his arm while ironing at home. But the imprint of the iron was too deep and too well-placed to be a glancing burn—and so instead of calling his mother, I contacted Social Services.

In an instant, Jeremiah’s rude and obnoxious behavior was explained. I understood he was reacting to his physical and emotional pain in the only way he knew how and it was a cry for help.

When we teach, do we know our students’ stories? More importantly, if we are teaching cross-culturally, as I was, do we know the culture our kids come from, what values are important in that culture, what challenges they have overcome, and what has shaped their behavior in the classroom? Would knowing this change our frustration with them into an understanding and care?

How will we learn their stories if we do not ask for them? Once we know, are we willing to take the time to adjust our attitudes and teaching to support our students’ learning?

One of my own children had a teacher who did exactly that. At the beginning of the year meeting, he said that he was sending a letter to each parent asking for a short summary of their story.  Here is a copy of that email:

First order of business for me is getting to know my students, and this is something you can help me with. Some people love English class and for others it is a character-building experience. Furthermore, so many of our students come from diverse schooling backgrounds that I can’t make any assumptions about them. Could you write me a brief paragraph about your son or daughter’s schooling experience in the past? This shouldn’t be comprehensive, but rather a chance for you to tell me anything you think I really ought to know about your child for this school year. If that is too vague, perhaps you could tell me one thing you think your child may enjoy about English class and one area he or she may find challenging.

I filled out this questionnaire about my son, and the teacher took the time to really absorb this information. He cared about my son’s story. As a result, he was able to adjust his teaching in a way that ended up being so transformational that my son later described the experience in his college application essay.

If we do not learn our students’ stories then we risk perpetuating their pain and not providing them the assistance they need to process their past and move on with hope for their future. Learning their stories can be transforming for us as we begin to understand why they are behaving as they are, and meaningful for our students as we respond and teach to them in light of their stories.

What steps can you take to learn your students’ stories?

Debbie Kramlich, Ph.D. candidate
TeachBeyond, Thailand.
Debbie Kramlich is finishing up her Ph.D. in Educational Leadership in International Theological Education. As a part of this process, she has spend time studying transformative learning theory. This is the first in a series of articles on the teacher’s role in transformative learning. If you have a question or comment for Debbie, you can reach her by e-mailing onpractice@teachbeyond.org.  

Mapping out success through formative assessment

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One of my favourite apps for navigation is Waze. This app not only provides step-by-step directions, but also adjusts the path based on current traffic situations. This serves as an excellent analogy for how teachers should use formative assessments in their classroom; they determine the best route needed to insure that students arrive at the final destination, which is deep understanding.  map

Many teachers understand what formative assessments are, but they struggle with how to implement them in their classrooms. Formative assessments come in all different forms; basically anything that is used by teachers to determine their students’ understandings, beliefs, and attitudes about their content is considered formative.

As a teacher, I enjoy gleaning ideas from other teachers. Below, I have described three of my favorite formative assessment tools. I will also include a link to a Google presentation that has a myriad of other ideas. Google Presentation – Formative Assessment

Exit Slip – Focused Content Summary: Exit slips are an amazing tool to see what students have learned in a given class period. One of the tools I have used to help students summarise their learning is to have them first list words that they learned and heard throughout the class period. I then ask them to write a summary paragraph including the words that they listed. I have found that doing this first step helps them to be more focused in their writing. As a teacher, I can read the students’ responses to see if they understand the lesson. This can lead to another one of my favourite formative assessment tools – My Favourite No.

My Favourite No- In this strategy, the teacher reads through a formative assessment that they previously gave in class (this could be a bell ringer or an exit slip), and identifies an example(s) to share with the class. “My favourite no” would be a response that exhibits a misconception or common mistake. By sharing this with the class, the teacher establishes an environment that welcomes mistakes and gives the teacher an opportunity to demonstrate how to correct the mistakes. The examples are anonymous and are used as a re-teaching opportunity, and just like a GPS, it helps the class recalculate and stay on the correct path.

Text Rendering – Sentence/Phrase/Word – After the students read a passage, they are asked to identify a sentence that was meaningful and that represents important information, a phrase that captures their attention or that is provocative, and a word that stuck out as being important. After students do this individually, they are asked to discuss what they chose with a group. Through this group discussion, students can explain how they made their choices, and also discuss why certain sentences/phrases and words were and were not chosen. As the teacher walks around and listens to the groups, they can highlight important information that wasn’t mentioned in the group discussions, and can correct any misconceptions.

These are only a few of the tools I have collected during my teaching career. As Untitledyou navigate through your course, please remember to check to see if your students are still travelling with you. It would a shame to get to your destination only to find out that your students are not with you upon arrival. Happy travelling!

Leighton Helwig, M.Ed.

Philippines National Director/Regional Education Specialist

TeachBeyond

On Practice: Get students moving

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As a teacher, I spend my days on my feet. I know that my proximity to my students is one of the best tools I have as far as classroom management, on-task behaviour, checking for understanding, and encouraging student questions. Any time there are students in my room, it is rare for me to be sitting at my desk. And because this is my reality, it is easy to forget that the same is not true for my students.

Unlike me, my students spend the majority of their days sitting in desks. Their experience of school is far more sedentary than mine. It often has more in common with what we as adults experience when we attend multi-day conferences than what we experience when we are in our own classrooms. And as anyone who has attended one of those conferences can attest, just the very nature of sitting all day is draining. It’s no wonder that many students struggle to stay engaged.[1]

One of the things that we can do to help our students break up the monotony of sitting is to find ways to incorporate movement into our classes. This may take some intentionality and creativity on our parts, but the benefit to our students is worth it. Here are a couple of ideas to get you started:

Opinion Spectrums:

This activity can be done in just about any subject. Present the students with two opposing positions and ask them to think about which position they most closely agree. Create a space that represents a continuum of ideas with one position on the left hand side and the other on the right. (Some teachers place tape on the floor or use hallway space to create this space.) Give the students several minutes to brainstorm their reasons or support for the stance that they have taken. Then have them move to a location on the spectrum that represents what they believe. Ask students from various places on the spectrum to support their opinions. Students who are uncertain where they fall can be challenged to make a decision based on the most compelling argument they hear from their classmates.

Around the World: 

Students of all ages enjoy playing games. Games that allow for movement are especially good for primary and middle school students.  In this game, students are paired against each other to answer questions.  If a student gets the answer correct before his partner, he moves to challenge the person in the next seat.  He continues moving until he answers incorrectly or is beaten by another classmate.  The object of the game is for the student to move all the way around the classroom and return to his/her original seat.  As an additional twist (which can help keep all students engaged) if both competitors answer incorrectly or fail to answer before a given time, the teacher can randomly choose another student in the room to answer the question.  If that student gets the answer correct, she moves to the position in the room that would have been occupied if one of the other competitors had gotten the answer correct.

Gallery Walks:

This activity takes a bit more time to prepare and execute. Break students into small groups and assign each group a subset of what you have been studying. Ask them to create artifacts (such as pictures, statues, or museum exhibits) that illustrate the major concepts covered in their assigned topic. (For example, I often have my students illustrate major tenets or authors of a given literary movement.) Once students have created their artifacts, have them arrange these around a given space (in the classroom, the library, the gym).  Each group then takes turns guiding the rest of the class through the gallery space explaining the significance of, and fielding questions about, each artifact to the rest of the class. (If the weather is nice and you have an available space, I’ve found that nearly all students enjoy using chalk for this activity.)

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What other activities have you tried to incorporate movement into your classes?  Feel free to send us an e-mail at onpractice@teachbeyond.org.

[1] For an interesting article on one teacher’s experience “going back to school” and sitting all day, check out this blog: A Veteran Teacher Turned Coach Shadows 2 Students for 2 Days.

Becky Hunsberger, M.Ed.
Teacher Education Services
TeachBeyond

Photo Credits:  Tag. Donnay via Compfight cc. Students. US Department of Education via Compfight cc.  Sidewalk Chalk.  hoyasmeg via Compfight cc.

On Practice: Good little boys and girls?

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As the school year begins, this is a good time to examine our classroom management practices and the expectations we convey to our students. Through the practices we develop at our schools, are we cultivating “good” kids or kids who know they are sinners in need of a Saviour? Do we inadvertently equate compliance with godly character? Do we produce young people who at least partially believe they are “more spiritual” because they memorise Scripture and listen to Christian radio? As educators, we want to effectively communicate the Gospel message to our students, but do we do this by being a role model of goodness or by making sure our students know that we are broken sinners saved by grace alone? Admittedly, these questions do not allow fair response choices, but hopefully they do spark some reflection on the message of “being good” we sometimes communicate in Christian schools.
I am not sure how the excessive interest in being good became so embedded in Christian schooling. Certainly it is rooted in our desire as believers to honor God. Yet somehow the external applause for being good got confused with the internal outworking of the Holy Spirit. How does a teacher get across that the Gospel is not about “being good,” but about the fact that you are “not good enough” and need Jesus to take care of that?

As head of a Christian school I tried to be a good role model. To be honest, I even tried to be a role model about things I did not actually believe, quoting to myself the Scripture about not offending a weaker brother or sister. Although there is truth about the impact of role modeling and sensitivity to offending a weaker Christian, this approach mistakenly puts my goodness rather than Christ’s redemption of my brokenness before the eyes of the student. Once I realised this, I began to direct my thoughts and my actions to the goal of how to authentically point my students to the Christ who lovingly gave His life because our goodness was just not good enough.

As a school head, I handled students sent to my office for disciplinary reasons. Often they entered my office with a chip on their shoulder and defiance in their eyes. But as I told them of my own shortcomings and how the atoning work of Christ is not just for Heaven’s sake, but for the here and now, their postures changed. The focus ceased to be on their good behavior, but on their need for Jesus’ work of transformation in their lives. Of course I backed my teachers by giving the students a strong reason to not commit the offence again, but I tried to make sure there was no confusion about the difference between being good and truly following Christ.

As I’ve wrestled with this distinction, here are a few ideas that I have for helping us to think through ways to model the Gospel to our students:

  • Openly talk about our struggles and need for Christ’s power and His forgiveness
  • Consider how and why we present awards to students
  • Carefully evaluate what we are saying when we offer praise
  • Read Tim Keller’s book Prodigal God and Donovan Graham’s Teaching Redemptively
  • Ask students to assess their motivation for good behaviors and use this as a springboard for a deeper discussion about righteousness

What about you? What are your reflections on this issue? I’d love to learn from you about how to effectively model the essence of the Gospel to students. When the pats on the back for being “good” are taken away, what will drive our students to godly living? What can we as educators do to make a transformational difference? E-mail your thoughts to us at onpractice@teachbeyond.org and we’ll share your insights in a future post.

Helen Vaughan, Ph.D.
Director of School Services
TeachBeyond