Spangler: Chapter 2 RR

According to Peter Senge’s book, The Fifth Discipline, he defines a learning organization as, “Any business work team, big or small, that engages in ongoing, collaborative problem solving focused on making the business better.” For educational purposes, this “learning organization” is referred to as a professional learning community. This consists of teachers working together to better their curriculum's and schools, and at the same time, making the effort to make time to work collaboratively.

The benefits of learning communities are enormous. According to chapter 2, they include decreased teacher isolation, increased commitment to the mission, shared responsibility, more powerful learning, and a higher likelihood of fundamental, systematic change.

I also thought it was important to see how much teachers get out of learning communities. In the example about Carmel Crane, a teacher in California, she describes the immense support and feedback she got from other teachers whom she presented her project to. She said that she had never experienced anything like that in her previous school and it was really helpful to get feedback and see the things she may have overlooked in her planning of the project. She also included that it was the panel of colleagues that encouraged her to take the project into the community as well. I think this shows how greatly learning communities affect teachers in a positive way.

These learning communities are not only beneficial to teachers. Professional learning communities focus on three important goals, which are all centered around the students. They include making sure the students are learning, creating a collaborative culture in the school, and focusing on results. It makes sense that these learning communities affect students, because ultimately they are the reason teachers do everything they do; to help students learn.

As for the vision these teachers must share to work as a team is very important in professional learning communities. The book lists a lot of important reasons teachers must share the same vision. Having a clear sense of mission, sharing a vision of the conditions needed to achieve that mission, working collaboratively to figure out the best ways to achieve the mission are just a few important components of shared vision in learning communities. I think this is an obvious point. How are teachers going to work together in a positive way if they are not on the same page? Of course they need to agree on a mission and how they are going to achieve it.

This chapter relates to our project because we are all teachers working together to create this project for our students. We need to work collaboratively and have the same vision for our websites.

Overall, I am very supportive of the learning communities discussed in this chapter. I think working together as teachers is just as important as this book makes it seem. Especially with project-based learning, which may be new to a lot of teachers trying to implement 21^st century technology for their students. To be successful in this change it is very important for teachers to work collaboratively with their colleagues.