In my recent blog about AIER’s approach to professional development workshops for teachers, I discussed an analogy suggested by Fred Ende. He wrote that during the follow-up process, both “regular water — reflection — and sunlight — coaching/support — are needed for the best growth” of a planted seed of a teaching idea. To provide the “sunlight” of additional mentoring support to AIER-trained teachers, I traveled to Chicago to have a discussion with the alumni of the 2016 Chicago Teach-the-Teachers Initiative (TTI) program.

We met at the Center for Economic Education of the University of Illinois at Chicago. The agenda included reflection on their classroom experiences after the AIER summer program, with the focus on such questions as what worked, what needs revision, what can be expanded, and what additional help is needed. We also explored the idea of building a Professional Learning Community for Chicago TTI alumni.

According to the experts in the field, a Professional Learning Community is a “group of people who share a common concern, a set of problems, or interest in a topic and who come together to fulfill both individual and group goals.” Such a community creates a professional domain to produce new knowledge and share best practices. We watched a video depicting the essence of a Professional Learning Community, and discussing how the network would support teachers’ needs and professional growth.

As we explored the stages of the design and growth of such a community, we realized that we are in the “inquiry” stage. We worked in groups to identify our audience (who is the community for?); domain (what are the key issues of interest?); and what would be our purpose, goals, and outcomes.

The meeting concluded with an understanding that building a Professional Learning Community requires a lot of commitment from teachers, and the ability to look creatively for ways to integrate each other’s skills and expertise into a viable learning community. AIER will continue to support our TTI alumni with mentoring and coaching to help teachers grow the seeds of ideas they planted during this workshop.

Picture: L to R: Joy Joyce, Natalia Smirnova, Patricia Breckenridge, Sheryl Gallaher, Noreen Joan Kane