Departmental Professional Learning Community planning

Today our school reviewed the guidelines and expectations of professional learning communities. Each department at the school by default is a professional learning community. Together the other members of my department and I reviewed data from last year's student testing. We identified several areas that we can focus on during the coming year. We also decided there was data missing that we needed from administration. We specifically want to look at how we have been able to improve the learning of individual students over the years (not just a general comparison. The basic comparison usually is last year's 7th grade students with the previous year's 7th grade class. We hope to determine how each year's class has improved in their science understanding compared to their work in the previous year.




There was also a short discussion with administration of the importance of NETS in every classroom. We proposed that NETS be associated with all classes at the school (not just computer classes.) Among the suggestions that we provided was the implementation of NETS in regular classes for both students and teachers. I look forward to the dialogue with administration on this proposal.