Chapter 2 was all about creating a professional learning community. Teamwork is definitely the theme of the chapter. The focus of learning communities are a collaborative, professional community. A learning organization is any business work team, big or small that engages in ongoing, collaborative problem solving focused on making businesses (or schools) better. A learning community is the same as a learning organization. Anyone within a learning community is continually learning how to learn together.
There are many benefits to learning organization, or a learning community. First, it can add support to your work and ideas. It also allows the teachers and students to collaborate, and work together to problem solve, and learn how to learn together- both of which are applicable in the "real world". Through the learning community, you are able to watch and reflect on each other's work, and give each other critical feedback.
As a teacher, you ensure that students learn, create a culture of collaboration for school improvements, and focus on results.
For teachers, specific benefits can include decreased teacher isolation, increased commitment to the mission, shared responsibility, more powerful learning, and a higher likelihood of fundamental, systematic changes.
The components for shared vision in learning communities include having a clear sense of mission, sharing a vision of the conditions you must create to achieve the mission, working together in collaborative teams to determine the best practice to achieve the missions, becoming organized into groups headed by teacher-leaders, focusing on student learning, being goal and results oriented, collaborating with each other, holding shared values and beliefs, committing themselves to continuous improvement, and seeing themselves as life-long learners.
The concepts in this chapter are extremely relevant to our project. Before we even begin to delve into the material, we must collaborate as a group in order to be on the same page, in order to all create the same final product. We need to have a shared vision of how to approach the topic, and then how to distribute the work and problem solve as a team how to accomplish it.
Everyone likes teamwork! I think students need to learn the importance of teamwork. When the teachers are using teamwork to better their lessons, they will be able to promote the use of teamwork in groups to their students so they are understanding the importance of teamwork. We will all be exposed to people we do not always like, and we may even be paired up or grouped with them for a project... teamwork is also a way for students to learn how to work with others, even if they don't always like the other group member(s).
ReplyDeleteIT IS FUN WITH TEAMS
WE MUST LEARN TO WORK AS ONE!
GO TEAMWORK, OH YEAH!
I like how you related to Learning Communities as buisnesses because it is so true that teachers need to work with one other for a common goal, just like a team would in a business agreement. Also, the "real world" situations are very good for students to gain experience with! I also wrote about this in my reading relfection because of its significance. Children need to start working together at a young age so that they can figure out their strengths and weaknesses when do so.
ReplyDeleteYou are right, teamwork is important and it is a major requirement for our project in this class. I also love how you said that teachers must commit themselves to being life long learners. This is a great point to make and the teacher's eagerness to learn will be viewed by their students. The example of how to work in a team is set by their teachers. If the teachers in a school aren't working collaboratively then the students will have a more difficult time learning how to work with other students and become prepared to work as a team later in life.
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