Search

Collaborating via Professional Learning Networks & Communities

Crystal Davis
Nov 3, 2017
4 min read

The professional learning networks I have joined are:

1. New Teacher Help (www.edweb.net/newteacherhelp)

In this professional learning community, new educators are able to gain ideas, support, and share their experiences as first year teachers. Although I am not a new teacher, I remember how difficult my first year of teaching was and hope to play the role of mentor for the new teachers. I hope to gain and understanding of areas (in technology integration particularly) where they feel they need more support and provide them with resources, suggestions, and ideas. Hearing their concerns will also help me know things to consider as a digital leader on my campus.

2. Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Teaching (www.edweb.net/clrt)

In this professional learning community, educators are able to explore and discuss theories and practices to better understand and serve learners from diverse cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. As a member of this community, I hope to share my experience working with culturally and linguistically diverse learners both locally and abroad and ideas of ways to serve these students. I also hope to learn from the experiences of others and gain new ideas for instructional practices that I can possibly apply when I return to teaching abroad in the future.

3. TechTools for the Classroom (www.edweb.net/techtools)

In this professional learning network, educators gain access to new resources, free technology, and ideas for innovative ways to integrate technology into the classroom environment to increase to student engagement. As a member of this community, I hope to learn more ways to effectively utilize technology as an educational tool and share these practices with other educators.

Reflect on your experience as a member of a learning community (ies).

I am honestly very new to the whole experience of being a part of digital learning communities. However, I am very excited to be a part of these digital learning communities based on my experience in face to face learning communities. Most of my experience with learning communities/networks has been at either my school or at the district level. As a member of these communities, I was involved in groups that worked towards establishing a writing vertical alignment piece to improve students’ understandings of the writing process and production of writing pieces across all grade levels. In these groups, we were able to share our own personal struggles with writing and teaching writing to our students. We were also able to share our successful practices and the resources that aided in our successful practices. I was able to learn so much and gain so many ideas in these communities. I can only imagine how much knowledge I will be able to gain in digital communities with members from all over the world.

What are you consuming and what are you contributing?

Due to the fact that I am relatively new to these digital learning communities, I have definitely been more on the consuming end of the spectrum more than the contributing end. So far, the only contribution I have made is introducing myself to the groups because I have been very focused on taking in how the groups are formatted, the videos, articles, and blogs that are posted, the subject matters of the discussions, and noticing ideas and concepts that have not been discussed or considered. However, I do plan on contributing to the discussion boards soon by initiating conversations on important topics not being discussed in each particular community.

If you have not been part of a learning community, why would this type of networking tool be critical to your advancement of knowledge in the field about key ideas?

According to the article The Impact of Professional Learning Communities, “PLCs are based on the premise that learning results from the varied perspectives and experiences that members share with one another as they work toward common goals.” (Barton and Stepanek, 2012). Therefore, the digital learning community is a networking tool that is even more critical to advancement of knowledge in the teaching field because it allows access to an even greater number of educators and/or tech knowledgeable individuals globally. With access to a greater number of these individuals globally, one is able to gain a broader range of ideas, feedback, perspectives, suggestions, and recommendations from people of diverse cultures, socio-economic, educational, and technological backgrounds. Having such varied ideas can help to enhance lesson planning and development as well as teaching practices.

Elaborate about your current status of collaboration and engagement in your chosen field.

Currently I serve as a math interventionist on my campus. In this role, I go to various math classrooms on my campus to work with students who are showing difficulties in certain areas. Prior to working with students, I always speak with each teacher to learn more about the students and their habits in class (i.e. what times during the lesson they seem to be/not be engaged). Then, during my first small group, I take the time to introduce myself to each student and then allow them to tell me about themselves and things they like to do both in school and outside of school as I take notes. I do this because it allows me to get a better sense of where their interests are and what their learning styles may be. Therefore, I can know which activities and topics will increase engagement. I then plan small group lessons to cater to their interests and styles and suggest to teachers that they try incorporating some of these interests into their teaching examples and classroom guided practice activities in order to keep these lower performing students engaged. For example, I worked with one kindergartener who had difficulty counting from 1 to 20. After speaking with him in our first small group, I found out that he was very tactile (he kept touching items on the table) and he loved dinosaurs. So, I borrowed a collection of small toy dinosaurs from the science lab teacher and allowed my student to use these as counters when teaching him how to count to 20. Every time he counted to 20 correctly, I would give him a dinosaur sticker. This increased his engagement with counting to 20 tremendously and increased his success rate. Noticing this, I then went to the teacher and suggested that he try to use dinosaurs as much as possible with this student as a teaching tool.

Resources: