I have referred to myself as the lead learner in the school now for about 3 years. With mixed reaction. I believe that is exactly who I am. However as Stephen M.R. Covey states in The Speed of Trust, always being a learner and failing to produce results has a negative impact on the competency realm. I intend to produce results by strengthening the bonds of professionalism that tie our teachers together. I intend to produce results by strengthening the bonds of Trust between all stakeholders in our learning community. And I certainly intend to produce results in improving student achievement through improving instructional practise. I will do all of this by embracing the fact that the adults in the building are the ones that must do the learning first.
What to learn? Learn about the students interests, abilities, current performance. Learn about instructional strategies that are research based and tested. Learn about each other and our organization. Most of all learn from each other. Our new focus in education is the “House” model of problem solving without the belligerent harassment and belittling.
The modern Professional Learning Community or Learning Network exists to embrace real challenges and problems to the instructional – achievement gap. Key questions:
- 1. What do kids need to know and be able to do?
- 2. How do we know they can?
- 3. What do we do when they aren’t able to?
- 4. What do we do when they can?
I have added a 5th and final question that is much more complex to answer:
- 5. How do we know that what we did made the difference?
The whole focus is on adult learning. Professional adult learning about how and why students learn or don’t learn. It happens around a table with equal players a facilitator and a piece of student work or data in the middle of it. Often Protocols are used to maintain structure and norms. Professional Learning communities embrace the unknown in an effort to better understand the student and the strength of instructional practises.
Learning is the new teaching. Some schools have even embedded this PLC time into a monthly schedule in order to facilitate this learning and establish true Professional Learning Communities. Schools of now embrace these opportunities and focus their attention on the accountability of closing the instruction – achievement gap rather than the accounting of crossing off curriculum expectations and moving on.
Just Found: Teaching as Co-Learning -James Shelley
[…] recent post on an edublog called “Cowpernican Avocations” caught my attention: “learning is the new teaching,” it proclaims. From this blog, I wound my way through several other edublogs–some […]
Thanks so much for the mention. I have shared your blog as well. Appreciated.
Ditto, Cowpernicus!
I am fairly new to the edublogging scene, but what impresses me the most is how much we, as educators, have in common–our desires for our students, our passions for life-long learning and sharing our experiences with others, our willingness to venture into unexplored territories in education–regarless of the environment or mode of delivery in which we teach or even regardless of the age of our students.
Your phrase “learning is the new teaching” captivated me. It embodies so much of the environment that educators are trying to achieve today. This phrase seemed like the perfect way to begin my workshop on blogging for instructors, so I just HAD to link to your post.
Your blog is a wonderful resource and a good read. I’m sure I will return often to see what’s new.
Thank you!
[…] was initiated by one of his students). As a result of the dialogue, I now find myself reading the blogof an elementary school principal in Windsor as well. The internet is an amazing thing, kids. This […]
[…] was initiated by one of his students). As a result of the dialogue, I now find myself reading the blog of an elementary school principal in Windsor as well. The internet is an amazing thing, kids. This […]