Introduction
The mission and purpose for my blog is to gain a better understanding of a Community of Practice and how to become a better member of the communities I belong to.
Communities of Practice can be described as groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. I would argue that teachers are a quintessential Community of Practice, especially in today's setting. We are actually have many layers to our Community of Practice. First would be the community of our school system, in my case, Fairfax County Public Schools. We are also broken down into regions but I'll leave that as part of the entire system. The next would be the communities where our schools are located, and then within the school we could boil it down to content and grade level (PLT's). But the one commonality of all of our communities is the passion we have for teaching, learning and kids. We interact regularly as teams and take classes (or DOODLE) so we can learn how to do it better.
I would also like to add that it hasn't always been that way, especially the second part. Oviously we have always had a passion for what we do but back in the "old days" I felt like we were on an island as teachers and rarely planned or interacted on a regular basis. I think we have learned that the whole is better than or individual parts :)
I have taught a long time in FCPS and like everything else that changes, students have really become quite addicted to their cell phones, computers, video games (rated way over their head in my opinion) which makes teaching even more difficult. Students have a difficult time paying attention in class and interacting with each other. Back in the old days teachers still planned together and interacted with each other but I feel like there was more creativity because you didn't have a platform that you could utilize at the snap of your fingers. Are students today learning how to communicate with their peers? How can you work with your CLT to create lessons that hold students interests? How do you share your passions with other teachers and get them engaged? What are the concerns you have and how can you make changes to better your practice?
ReplyDeleteYes, and there is always something to learn from being in a community of practice. Like you said, for us, there is always something we can be doing to stay relevant. It's like technology. By the time you get one thing, they already have something new out there. There's always probably going to be a shift in the best practices of education and we have to continue to communicate, collaborate, and use various platforms to learn and stay in the present and future, not the past.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, the comment above is from me, Logan.
ReplyDeleteI agree that we all share a common community of teaching that expresses our passion for teaching, learning and the children. I also think it is pretty cool that our community of practice is our community of interest as well. Teaching communities offer a place of collaboration on best practices, strategies success stories as well as failures. A safe place to share, grow and learn.
ReplyDeleteI'm so thankful that things have switched toward more of a "community of practice" to being on that island. There's so much more power having a whole than just a part! I find myself often times struggling with ways to best teach a concept, with a little collaboration with my PLT, we take that concept and make a beautiful lesson out of it.
ReplyDelete