EDUCATION: PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITY

PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITY A professional learning community is essential in a school system because it creates an environment of learning with good learning collaboration from the teaching facu lty. Through an article by Richard Dufour, the concept of exploring a professional learning community has been successfully explored through theoretical and practical theories. The article shows that a professional learning community cannot be achieved without collaboration from teachers. I agree with the author that teaching cannot be an independent task because different teachers bring different results from their students. When they collaborate, they help each other understand the methods they can incorporate in their classes to achieve the best results and enhance learning. Interestingly, many teachers do not like to collaborate to come with better ways to enhance learning. I believe that this can be corrected by educating teachers on the importance of collaborating and coming with good ideas for teaching. For example, the case study represented in the article of Bones Mills Elementary is an excellent example of how a collaborative culture can improve learning in a school. The process is easy to adopt in any learning environment, and therefore creating a professional learning environment in school should be seen as an unachievable task. Through attention and collection of data to form a reasonable basis of what can be implemented, the process will be achieved in the long run. Therefore, for this process to be effective, all teachers should be open-minded and ready to make sacrifices. As seen in the case study, the process goes throughout the years, meaning that the results will not be achieved in a short span of time, and because of this, patience should be practiced throughout the process. Through the act, it is seen that sharing of information aids in the process, and this is true because if the information is not made public, no insights will be created. After going through the process of creating a good plan for a better learning process, it is important to look if the methods implemented are working or not. To establish this, the faculty should focus on the students' results, and they can do this by looking at the students' performance after implementation of the policies. In the education system, results are an important factor, and therefore this should also be the case in the implementation of an excellent professional learning community. I also like the idea of focusing on classroom activity and creating a good balance with extra-curricular activities, which is vital as it makes a student create a balance in their study life. Show Less