An Educational Community with highly prepared professionals to provide students with the best possible learning in a joint effort with parents.
Since our las update, besides continuing with the Master’s program in Education for eighteen of our teachers through Western Carolina University, we have designed and put into a document Colegio Bolivar’s Comprehensive Professional Learning System which we will be sharing with all interested parties. In addition, we are closing the semester with the report from the different PLC teams which have been working hard, within different structures, in their professional development.
Some grade levels or departments are carrying out action research projects for which they have reviewed relevant and up-to-date literature and they have designed data collection tools, jointly. Others have established plans for formally sharing their knowledge and expertise with colleagues, from which everybody has benefited, and will continue next January with the application stage, verifying the impact that it has on their students’ learning. A third approach has implied choosing a particular text, directly related to their common goal, to work on it during multiple sessions, identifying the applicability in the classroom of discussed topics. Last, there are teams that have received the support from their coaches to strengthen competencies and strategies needed to continue maximizing the curricular implementation.
The process of implementing the Colegio Bolivar: A Professional Learning Community (PLC) project went from its initial phase (2015-2016 school year) during which specific goals that are student-centered were formulated, common diagnostic tools were designed, and preliminary results were analyzed, to a stage in which the different teams learned from sharing experiences with colleagues. Within this framework, teachers see themselves as learners who take advantage of time and opportunities given during school hours to go further in the development of their own competencies, with the help of their teammates. It has been demonstrated that this type of professional learning, that is contextualized and meets the immediate needs in the classroom, is the most effective one.
his process of implementation has extended from the emphasis on the PLC teams, as they meet every week to work on meeting their common SMART goals, to consider every aspect related to professional learning in the school.
