In my school currently, the model of collaboration used in departments is Professional Learning Communities (PLC's). Each department is able to divide into the PLC's they determine will be most helpful for the department members. In the math department we are divided into PLC's based on what math content we teach. Since we are split by content, each teacher has three PLC's they are a part of. With three different PLC's it is very difficult for teachers to have enough time to meet with their PLC's on a regular basis. The district has moved to a late start Friday model to give us more time to meet during school hours but it is not enough. We are still needing to meet after school and unfortunately our meetings are mostly about what we are going to teach next. We are taking time to collaborate on what we are going to teach, but not how we are going teach it. We also do not take time to figure out how it went once we did teach it. We do not take the time to look at our assessments since people have different grading speeds. So, while our PLC's are functioning for collaboration about what we are going to teach, we have a long way to go before we are successfully using our PLC's to monitor student growth.
Within our school, my principal uses shared decision making. If a decision needs to be made, she will bring it to the department heads first, and then if needed the department heads will take the issue to our departments. This method of collaboration has helped with buy in from our staff. When our principal took over five years ago, she made some changes without getting staff input first. This led to a very poor climate survey at the end of the school year. From then on she has used shared decision making to make decisions for our school.
Lesson Study: How could you see this model implemented in your school?
As I think about the PLC's in the math department, I think about what we could use to help improve the efficacy of them. As I read about the lesson study process,
- "Study curriculum and formulate goals;
- Plan;
- Conduct research; and,
- Reflect" (Zepeda, 2012, p.226).
I thought about how this could apply in my department as a part of our already functioning PLC's. We are already doing the planning. Our PLC's as I said above are focused on the planning portion. The "what" we are going to teach. However, we would need to "identify a specific learning problem and how this learning problem affects the learning goals of the students" (Zepeda, 2012, p. 227). Right now, we are planning for what we are going to teach but this would add a goal to what we are teaching aside from getting through the content by the end of the year. The part of this model that would be difficult for us to implement would be the research conducting portion. "These lessons involve a team of teachers observing and collecting data as one teacher teaches the lesson" (Zepeda, 2012, p. 227). We do not have planning periods that align with teachers teaching the same subject. Since this is the case we would need to arrange subs in order to actually do the research portion of the Lesson Study.
As I learn about more collaboration methods, I am working with my department to make sure we are effectively collaborating with each other.
