Reading Reflection #2

1. The focus for learning communities for teachers to be able to work together as a team. We create learning communities in our classrooms for our students to feel comfortable sharing their ideas but it's also important to have a professional learning community with staff and other teachers across the world. This way we can bounce ideas off each other, talk about ways we teach, and how aspects of projects are going in our classroom.
2. The benefits of having a learning community is to significantly improve the quality of time in the classroom. If teachers set up a professional learning community we will be able to discuss ideas and how to plan and implement these ideas. We can talk about how well certain aspects of a plan went or what needs to be changed. It puts teachers at ease and gives more input for the classroom so that our students are getting the best of us.
3. Learning communities affect teachers because it helps their confidence in the classroom. By being able to talk to other teachers they can connect and converse with colleagues and see what they are doing and what is working for them. This helps the overall attitude of the classroom and challenges the students. By having a professional learning community the teachers are less isolated, they are able to share responsibility, they have commitment to the mission which in turn creates more powerful learning.
4. Learning communities affect students because the expectations for them are being raised so they will be able to achieve more and they can feel comfortable sharing ideas. Setting a precedent of respecting everyone and listening to what each student has to say will allow children to explore their thoughts and ideas.
5. The shared vision in learning communities are similar to research-based visions which includes a clear mission, how members of the community are going to achieve this mission, pick teachers who are like-minded with yourself, collaborate with each other and see yourself as a student and learner again.
6. Concepts in this chapter contain to my project because I am going to be working with two other people so teamwork is essential. We need to be able to communicate and bounce ideas off each other so we can earn the best grade possible on our project. We need to be able to share responsibility and continuously improve our project.