Organizational structures foster purposeful learning and
meaningful relationships
Explain:
The 10th characteristic of
effective middle schools is that “organizational structures foster purposeful learning
and meaningful relationship” (This We Believe, pg 31). This means that both
teachers and students are divided into interdisciplinary teams to better foster
learning. Students learn best when they have the ability to collaborate with
their peers and with different teachers and teachers are able to best do their
job when they have common planning time with teachers teaching similar things
or working with similar students. The book This We Believe claims that teaching
teams of two to three teachers are maximally effective. Additionally they
describe how having teaching teams that let students work with the same
teachers years in a row creates increase comfort in the school environment and
better allows teachers to develop effective relationships with parents.
Describe:
An excellent example of an
organizational structure that fosters learning are the professional learning
communities at Park Crest Middle School. The professional learning communities
are responsible for collaborative planning, data collection and concentrational
learning. Their collaborative planning ensures that teachers across the board
are on the same page. For data collection, each student has data folders where
they track their progress over several years. They have a staff member of their
school working solely as the districts executive director of professional and organizational
development to help the school implement their professional learning
communities.
Analyze:
The reason that the professional
learning communities at Park Crest Middle School are so successful is because
they have a detailed plan about their collaborative responsibilities. Additionally
the meetings are supported by the school administration and above that as
professional learning communities are a district wide initiative. Having this
kind of supervision and support ensures that meetings are held, are productive
and are constantly evaluated for their effectiveness. Having the professional
learning communities interact with children for over a year, they help create a
sense of community for the students and provide them a more cohesive
educational experience, rather than a series of segregated learning
opportunities.
Apply:
Starting my second year as a teacher I
don’t know if I feel fully comfortable working to create larger structural
change in my school yet so pushing for formalized professional learning
communities may be a stretch. Regardless, I think there is much to be learned
about how they have been implemented in other schools and there are elements of
them that I can implement in my own classroom and with small groups of
colleagues. This website : http://www.allthingsplc.info/tools/samples.php
provides a huge range of resources that are beneficial for teacher planning,
and any kind of collaborative team meeting.
Additionally, because formal teacher
collaboration at my school is scarce, reflecting on these examples forced me to
consider how influential the organizational structure of a school can be on the
teaching and learning environment. I think in the long run they would be
extremely beneficial if well organized and supported, however in the short term
they could be very difficult to implement as teachers would see this as time taken
away from their classroom prep time.
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