Cycle 3: Schools as "Embryonic Communities"

My cycle two post began with, “I consider schools a mini-society within the larger society in which we live,” and this statement serves as a great starting point for my cycle three post.  John Dewey, an educational reformer, put forth the idea that a school can and should be more than a habitat for learning lessons that will have some remote relation to students’ futures, “…it gets a chance to be a miniature community, an embryonic society.” 

At the embryonic stage, schools have the potential for further development to provide quality and meaningful educational experiences for students by engaging all members in the community to work toward a common goal.  To engage students in the community – to be active and engaged members – a transition needs to occur that shifts the role of students from “listeners” to “workers.”  Many traditional classrooms are set up in a way so that students passively absorb knowledge transmitted from the teacher.  Instead, students should be placed in educational contexts where discovering knowledge is the norm.  It is only when students are motivated to learn and knowledge can be applied to their real-life that they will be able to positively contribute to the overall well-being of the community at school and the community at large.  Teachers can facilitate this transformation of student roles by being “knowledge workers,” engaging in reflective teaching practices, working collaboratively with colleagues and students, and keeping the students as the “center of gravity” in the classroom.

Many of the readings assigned for this cycle suggested approaches to further developing and nurturing communities in schools.  Small learning communities is one way to build rapport among students and between teachers and students.  From personal experience as a member of Team B in 6^th grade, I know full well the advantages of being a student in a small learning community.  Central Middle School, housing approximately 1,200 6^th – 8^th grade students, was three stories tall and intimidating to incoming students.  Add in that there were five elementary schools feeding into Central Middle School and that was enough to make the transition into 6^th grade uneasy at best and terrifying at worst.  Luckily, with the help of my four awesome team teachers, I connected to the school and my peers relatively quickly.  All Team B students were contained to the second floor of the building for academic classes, traveled to classes together, and ate lunch together.  Team B teachers worked with the same group of 120 students every day and had common planning time.  Looking back, I am glad Central Middle School used small learning communities to ease the transition of students into middle school; otherwise, I feel I would have had a more isolated learning experience.

Teachers can also suffer in isolation in schools, which may explain why 40% - 50% of teachers leave the profession in the first five years of their career.  To combat this, schools need to take action to promote collaboration and support among its faculty.  Every new teacher in the district where I work is assigned a mentor teacher for their first three years of their teaching tenure.  My mentor is fabulous!!!  She showed me the ropes when I first got hired in and over the past two years we have had many conversations about curriculum, teaching practices, classroom management, and working with parents.  She has been so supportive and is always there for me when I have questions or need to vent!  I know she has impacted me and I hope to have influenced her on a professional level as well.  Even though she technically won’t be my mentor next year, I would like to think our professional friendship and support for each other will continue.

To counteract the isolation both new and veteran teachers can encounter, Ann Lieberman and Lynne Miller discussion professional learning communities (PLC’s) to deal with issues of course content and the process of teaching.  They defined PLC’s as, “…collegial cultures where teachers develop the capacity to engage in honest talk.”  It is in PLC’s that teachers can discuss, debate, and reflect on their teaching practices.  For PLC’s to be most effective, Lieberman and Miller claim that reflective practices should be guiding discussions in order to promote “reciprocal, practical, active” learning among colleagues.  They also emphasize the importance of embracing conflict (when and if it occurs) as it shows that an illusion of consensus does not exist as it does in pseudo-communities. 

I believe PLC’s can be beneficial in building and contributing to a community within a school.  My only experience of working in PLC’s was for about four months when I first got hired.  The teachers did not utilize PLC’s in an effective manner to positively contribute to the community of teachers.  I would be interested in engaging in PLC’s in a setting laid out by Lieberman and Miller as I feel it would be a more powerful and meaningful experience.

With each of these suggested approaches, the community within schools is going to further develop only if the implementation of these approaches is carefully examined through inquiry.  What works for one school may not work for another; what works for one student may not work for another.  Action research may play a significant role in any changes made within a classroom, school, or district as students, educators, administrators, and parents work together in developing the community.   It is when we work together that a community flourishes!