I explained my intention to support educators in standards-based teaching and find ways to get students thinking critically at a higher level. I started by contacting the school principal, vice principal, and curriculum coordinator with my idea. Interested in starting your own virtual or in-person PLC? Here’s my advice: We don’t know what’s going to happen this year, but I am confident we will get through it together because we have that bond and common purpose of serving our school community. I hope that moving forward, they feel more comfortable coming to me with questions, and we can foster a community of trust and positivity. The PLC also helped me build culture and relationships with teachers in my school. They were able to create connections between literacy, math, reading, writing, science, and social studies, and tie these all back to standards and resources to make the most of their short time with students. In just eight weeks, the participating teachers felt more confident teaching science and social studies and had a strong grasp of techniques that cut across subjects. The PLC was beneficial in a number of ways. Sam Northern meets with his professional learning community to review different concepts. The eight of us decided to meet every week for one hour and grow the PLC organically based on collaborative input. I ended up with two volunteers each from first, second, and third grades, along with a curriculum coordinator. I started by sending an open invitation to elementary educators to join a science or social studies PLC, as they often voiced they didn’t have the time, tools, or confidence to teach those subjects. Unexpectedly, the pandemic gave me an opportunity to design and lead professional development that would be sustained, reflective, practiced, and customized to teachers and students via virtual professional learning communities (PLCs).Īt the start of the pandemic, I saw I could be a partner in making remote learning more effective and engaging. But as a school librarian, I want to show my peers that I can serve as a curriculum specialist and directly support their professional growth. There’s a common misconception that a school librarian’s work is distinct from a classroom educator’s work. Since I enjoy technology more than some, I started this blog for educators who love it too.This post was written by Sam Northern, a National Board Certified Elementary School Librarian, National Geographic Certified Educator, and Grosvenor Teacher Fellow. I have 25 years of experience teaching K-8 special ed., General Ed., and instructional & technology coaching. I'm an Innovative Learning Coordinator in Berkeley County South Carolina and a Google Certified Trainer. I knew we could use our GSuite tools to do it, just needed to figure out the best way to use them effectively! I'm sure there are add-ons and extensions for this, but we needed to keep it simple to be productive. We all know that is a time consuming task and not very productive. Our Principal really wanted to know if she could get a notification each time a PLC was held, but using a Google Team Drive, she'd have to just check the folders every day or watch the activity panel. In previous years, the Reading Coach had a great PLC agenda/notes template, but knowing when they were filled out or even if there were questions was hard for administration to keep up with. During that discussion, my Principal asked how we could improve the communication between administration and the teachers asking questions or needing feedback during PLC's if they weren't able to attend. I asked about how PLC's ran, what worked, what didn't work, etc. In the beginning of this year, I started a new job as a Reading Coach for a K-8 school.
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