Tag Archives: PLC

Professional Learning Communities

One Step at a Time

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With the gracious permissions of two extraordinary teachers, who also serve as co-facilitators of our middle school math PLC, I am pasting in a recent e-mail thread that transpired between the three of us, as well as one other teacher who teaches on the Algebra I team. As a school, we are making thoughtful transitions toward student learning that involve more real-life problem solving, project-based learning, and balanced assessment. Often the journey is difficult, challenging, and frightening. This journey forces us to reconsider some habits that we have developed as educators in our twenty-years careers. However, we are not alone, and we don’t have to “change everything,” especially not all at once. We can take one step at a time, and we can do so arm-in-arm with our colleagues.

Quick Cartoon “Commercial Break”

>>> JG 11/15/2010 1:49 PM >>>

Please watch when you can and let’s talk about it.
Conrad Wolfram: Teaching kids real math with computers
http://www.ted.com/talks/conrad_wolfram_teaching_kids_real_math_with_computers.html

>>> DD 11/16/10 11:51 AM >>>

It’s a great talk. I agree with most of what he said. My problem is I was trained the way he says we are inadequately teaching. I don’t know how to do what he says to do. I think you need to understand math a lot more than I do to see most real world connections. I have been hearing this idea a lot; but where is the curriculum? Where are some books that will help guide me to teach this way? If that isn’t on its way, then I guess I need to go back to school or get a new job. It is as daunting as if someone said I needed to take someone’s Latin class over and teach it.

I would like to discuss it in PLC.

>>> JG 11/17/2010 1:02 am >>>

Reading Dan Meyer’s blog offers good ideas:
http://blog.mrmeyer.com/

If you have not seen his TEDNYed talk, Dan Meyer: Math class needs a makeover, it offers a way to use our current books.
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_meyer_math_curriculum_makeover.html

>>> Bo Adams 11/17/2010 5:16 AM >>>

DD,

I respect your thoughts on this, probably more than you even might realize. However, I truly believe that any journey, any journey at all, begins with one step. Just one step can start the path. You have already made MANY steps toward the type of teaching that Conrad describes. In fact, you have been doing it for years. With the support of the PLC structure, I think your Algebra I team has made MANY steps toward this journey.

As a runner, I travel a sinusoidal curve in my training. When I am at a low point, and I am trying to make a run of significant distance, I often pick a short-term point in my vision – maybe a street sign, maybe a telephone pole. I just tell myself to “get to that point.” Then, I pick a new point. Often I feel like Donkey (no comment from any of you necessary) when Shrek was coaxing him across the rickety-old bridge that separated Princess Fiona’s castle-of-captive from the other side of a lava-filled gulf. Donkey made it with encouragement, ONE STEP AT A TIME. He did not have to jump the entire gulf in one fell swoop. [Sorry to mix metaphors!, but I did call myself an ASS!]

SHRINK THE CHANGE. Just pick one thing during one class to try. 20 minutes worth. You do this type of “action research” all the time! You are used to it. You just have to pick the next step in your journey’s path. And you have lots of support in your team and in me!

Bo

>>> DD 11/17/2010 11:10 am >>>

That was a great suggestion. It seems simple but I need to remember that when I start to feel overwhelmed. One step at a time.

>>> Bo Adams 11/17/2010 11:29 AM >>>

How would you two feel if I put all of the below in my “It’s About Learning” blog? I could remove your names, or leave them if you don’t mind. I think these emails make for a good story that could help support others.

Recent Participation in TEDx Atlanta – RE:LEARN

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Please visit the TEDxAtlanta site and read about the recent May 18 event – RE:LEARN. Also, here is a link to a video blog in which I participated…on TechDrawl

In a couple of months, the TEDxAtlanta talks will be posted to the website. In the meantime, here is a link to my bio on the TEDxAtlanta site http://tedxatlanta.com/speakers/05182010-relearn/bo-adams/.

Slow to Change – Rate of Exchange

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In countless conversations, I have talked with numerous people about the phenomenon of school change. Basically, schools are slow to change. At TEDx last week, several speakers made mention of the almost glacial rate of change that seems to describe schools. Why are schools generally so slow to change? Certainly, the slow rate of change must be related to the degree of isolation that describes the condition of most teachers in most schools. Since the Prussians created that model of schooling over 200 years ago that still exists in most U.S. schools today, teachers have worked in relative isolation. For the most part, schools have not enabled systems for teachers to work and learn together, collaborating during job-embedded team time. During my recent TEDx talk, I mentioned Kathy Boles’ description of schools as the “egg-crate culture.” For the most part, teachers do not live in a system that encourages exchange of ideas.

Then, on Saturday, the Wall Stree Journal published an essay by Matt Ridley – Humans: Why They Triumphed. Essentially, Ridley argues that creative invention among humans occurs because of exchange…trade. “The rate of cultural and economic progress depends on the rate at which ideas are having sex.”
So, if schools hope to keep up with the rate of change predicted for the 21st century, then we must create opportunities for greater exchange and trade of ideas among teachers. We must enable teachers to collaborate as a regular and expected mode of work. Let’s practice what we know to be best practice. What if we re-imagined the egg-crate and nested the eggs together? What if schools were structured so that teachers could exhange ideas and creatively innovate for educating 21st century learners? Schools might lead the change of the future, rather than struggling to keep pace.

Blog Motivation

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Since I began this blog, I have struggled with it. I started by thinking that I would try to write what others would want to read. Now, I realize that I will be much more successful if I write what I want to write…and trust that those who are interested will read the blog.

So what do I want to write? I want to write about Professional Learning Communities, teacher development, and education for the 21st Century. So if these topics interest you, we might have a connection.
During my typical school week, I so look forward to fourth period. Why? In fourth period, I participate in a professional learning community (PLC) with five amazing teachers who are committed to learning and rethinking the ways we approach and support the classroom. For the past three weeks, we have been exploring the modeling method of instruction. We investigate, discover, record data, collaborate on interpreting the data, and formulate better understandings of the world. An example of such an investigation is illustrated below with some spring oscillation data we have been collecting. What’s more, we work together to devise how we might better create such exciting learning environments and experiences for our students.
As a result of our work in the last three weeks, I have spent the morning studying labor statistics in an effort to create a learning experience for Economics 8. The investigation has been captivating and invigorating, and I do not even currently teach a section of Economics 8. My PLC peers have inspired me to explore, to ask questions, and to seek for answers. Isn’t this exactly what we want for our students? What better way to build such opportunities than to participate in such opportunities ourselves.