Be Better

Andrea Reichenberger contributed today's thinking.

As a fairly new member (and huge fan) of the Fox Valley Writing Project (FVWP), I love that I am able to connect with teachers who are excited about learning from their colleagues, want to learn, and want to be better. One clarification, the FVWP isn’t just about writing; in fact, as part of the National Writing Project, it refuses to define itself as any ONE THING.  It’s about learning, sharing, reflecting, and honoring teacher leadership.

After some great discussions at our gathering last week, I was saddened to hear about my Fox Valley Writing Project peers’ struggle to drum up interest from their colleagues. It is difficult for me to grasp as I as so thankful to be exposed to such a wealth of knowledge together in one room at the same time. Our rich discussions and sharing of ideas have been invaluable. Basically, we’ve created our own true Professional Learning Community.

Reflecting always leads me to questions, many of which I struggle to answer, but apply to many districts in which I have worked or consulted.

• Why wouldn’t we model ourselves as learners for our students? What is our ultimate reason for choosing this profession? Who are we here for?

• Why don’t ALL teachers want to learn and be better?  What are our excuses for not trying to learn?  What’s getting in the way? How can we remove any obstacles?.

• Did we begin to abuse the label of Professional Learning Community (PLC) (as we often do with other labels in education) and cause the term to become meaningless? Is it now a cause of contention in some of our schools? If so, how can we change that?

• Who should we trust as the experts? How can professional learning communities be used to honor and develop educator expertise (as labs for action research) instead of turning to other experts (or kits and scripts) to tell us what to do?

• When we recognize that our teachers are struggling, how do we, as instructional leaders, help coach and lead them toward success with the right tools and resources to improve their instruction? How do we send the message that it’s okay to struggle and that we are here to help you? How do we provide meaningful and appropriate feedback?

• How can our system promote the need for and allow teachers the time to have professional conversations, create common assessments, dig into the data, or just to learn from and plan together?  When we start to take this step, will it rebuild the trust we used to place in our teachers?

• How can we be more patient?  Change takes time and persistence; however, some changes are more urgent and not making them can do more damage than good.  How do we prioritize?

• Does being too comfortable lead us into to deeper chasms that put us further behind rather than move us forward?

• Are we promoting the mentality that because this the way it has always been done is a good enough reason to keep doing what we are doing?  Do we just want to be good enough or do we want to continue to strive to be better?

Unfortunately, I don’t have the answers--only more questions.  The ultimate question being: what can we control? We CAN control and communicate the message or vision, but the vision needs to have a clear purpose. We can also control the expectation. We can model our own learning and inquiry from investigating, listening, and asking the questions. We can control making the effort, providing the resources, and being willing to have the crucial conversations. We can seek out and create experiences, such as the Fox Valley Writing Project, or form our own PLC.  We can control whether or not we want to be better teachers for our students.