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Teachers make time for learning
By Adam Klinker, Recorder Correspondent
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The quest has been to find excellent teachers who can put their skills into practice in the most effective way and, as a consequence, present the material in such a way as to create proficient students.
For the past four years in the Ralston Public Schools, however, that educational undertaking has reversed course and the emphasis has shifted from teaching to learning.
This pendulum swing has been prompted by what RPS is calling the Professional Learning Community – something that is taking root, in one manifestation or another, in all of the district’s buildings.
“It’s not so much about saying, ‘I taught this and I taught that,’ anymore,” said Janell Shain, principal at Wildewood Elementary, where the first PLC was implemented in 2005. “Instead, it’s a question of ‘did the students learn?’”
As the name indicates, PLCs are concerned with striving to create a community of learners while also enhancing the professionalism of the teaching corps in the district.
The essential philosophy driving PLCs is that a teacher can instruct, show, cajole, and entice a student to grasp a particular lesson, but no matter what pressures or tactics are used, there will be a core group of students who will struggle with certain concepts.
“There will always be the group that still has trouble with it,” said Jennifer Reed, a fourth-grade teacher at Wildewood. “The accountability factor of the PLC is a way that we can start to identify that group earlier and collaboratively find the strategy that’s going to help them grasp that lesson.”
At that point, the PLC’s action plan has already sprung into effect – the idea being that a closer association between a building’s teachers will lead to enhanced strategies for learning.
At Ralston High School, where the PLC emanated from RHS’s School Improvement Collaboration Committee and is in its first year of existence, teachers are meeting to share ideas and strategies to assure that their students are sufficiently prepared for the next lesson, the next grade level, the next life stage.
“We look at it as asking ourselves how we are going to achieve excellence as a community of learners,” said Tiffanie Gauchat, assistant principal at RHS. “We’ve evolved out of just thinking about teaching to the focus on learning, focusing on student achievement not just in getting students through testing, but making sure they’re equipped with the skills and knowledge they need to proceed to the next level.”
As such, the collaboration between teachers in the PLC is an integral part of the process.
At the elementary level, teachers in the same grade level meet at least once weekly to talk about what strategies they are using and how they’re working with students. At the high school, teachers are grouped according to subject for the same discussion.
Cathy Grondek and Carol Ahl, who teach family and consumer science and mathematics, respectively, said the collaboration experience has thus far been invaluable for teachers at RHS.
“Experienced teachers are working with newer teachers and the strategies that they’re generating together are very helpful,” said Grondek, a 13-year veteran in RPS. “We’re learning from each other as well.”
Ahl, in her seventh year with the district agreed. “We’re getting ideas from each other and we’re figuring out how we can stay on board with things that work.”
The PLCs in Ralston have identified four questions that are helping to guide the action of the PLC: • What do we want students to know? • How do we know they’ve learned it? • What if they don’t know what we want them to learn? • What if they already know what we want them to learn?
“We’re rethinking how students are learning,” said Wanda Worsley, a student services specialist at RHS. “So often the tendency is to assess, say ‘OK, they’ve learned it,’ and move on. With the PLC, we’re adducing where students are, where they’ve been, and where they need to go.”
Starting an hour late on Wednesdays, teachers use that time to collaborate on PLC business and students are using the extra hour to get caught up or ahead of the curve in their classes.
“Kids are in the library, they’re in the computer lab,” said Gauchat. “Students are taking advantage of that time to study, get some help in an area where they need improvement.”
At the elementary level, students are also learning about the PLCs and the standards that their teachers would like them to develop as they begin their educational careers.
Lynn Behounek, a media specialist at Wildewood, said that in her position as a resource specialist, she has the opportunity to cut across grades and curriculums to help students get what extra attention they need.
“Students can feel success in the classroom,” Behounek said. “As educators, we don’t have any control over what happens outside of school, but in the classroom, we’re going to give them as many chances to succeed as possible.”
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