Reading Reflecting #2

Learning communities give teachers an opportunity to work with other teachers (groups) on developing project design. Teachers reflect on each other’s work and brainstorm ideas for improvement. They decrease teacher isolation, and is a more powerful way of learning with shared teacher responsibility.

There are many benefits to learning communities. Teacher’s projects improve, change happens when something isn’t following the curriculum, and teachers take steps towards common goals. Also they learn new patterns of thinking, they learn how to capitalize on the wisdom of the group and learn how to learn and work together.

Sometimes learning communities can affect teachers in the classroom. When working with other’s choices and classroom practices will be different. Making sure to give and receive critical feedback and respect other teachers is critical.

Learning Communities can affect students because students will have the same assignments. Some students may take advantage of this negatively by working on homework together, only one student doing the work and the others copping not learning the information. Also it can affect students because teachers are putting a lot of their time into their learning community and not working with their students enough.

Making sure teachers have a shared vision in learning communities is vital. Teachers must work together and agree on their project decisions. To get a project that follows the curriculum and has all teachers learning techniques included is important. Also making sure that each teacher agrees on the final project is important

Concepts in this chapter relate to my topic because in my group, building, we are working in a learning community. The three members in my group work together to achieve a lesson plan that fits the criteria, helps the students learn and each members point of view is incorporated into the project.