Meaning Matters Guiding the development of young readers through the use of meaningful literacy experiences

www.meaning-matters.org Leave the Canned Products for the Kitchen Posted by meaningmatters on November 6, 2011 at 6:35 AM The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. William Arthur Ward Meaning matters not only to the students I teach, but also to me as a teacher.I fear that as school funding gets tighter and tighter, the opportunities for professional development begins to suffer. Schools are spending many of their Professional development days training faculty on pre-packaged programs. Are teachers still being given meaningful learning opportunities themselves? The most refreshing and invigorating opportunities that I have had as a teacher have occurred while attending workshops with other professionals. The Lesley Literacy For All conference stands out as one of the top conferences. There is so much power and enrichment that comes from listening to an author speak about why he or she writes childrens books or learning how a teacher has found a new management system to help differentiate instruction. I would return from the conference ready to make new meaning of what I learned. However, funding cuts mean fewer opportunities are available for teachers to attend conferences where professionals outside of their district share their learning and teaching. One way in which many districts have compensated for this loss is to develop Professional Learning Communities (PLCs). Since teachers have less opportunities to gather and learn from each other, they need to capitalize on the chances that they do get. Noted former school superintendent Richard DuFour states that PLCs create opportunites for teachers to work together to achieve their collective purpose of learning for all. Fortunately, the district I work in places great value in PLCs and sets aside time each week for grade levels to have these meetings. As DuFour detailes, PLCs are designed to:( -Create a professional learning community. - Make teaching practice explicit and public by "talking about teaching" - Help people involved in schools to work collaboratively in democratic, reflective communities (Bambino) Establish a foundation for sustained professional development based on a spirit of inquiry (Silva)

- Provide a context to understand our work with students, our relationships with peers, and our thoughts, assumptions, and beliefs about teaching and learning. - Help educators help each other turn theories into practice and standards into actual student learning. Improve teaching and learning It is well worth having districts consider this model for achieving teacher and student success. For more information on PLCs visit: http://pdonline.ascd.org/pd_online/secondary_reading/el200405_dufour.html Beyond the use of PLCs, I worry that the sense of purpose for teachers is getting lost because they no longer need to think about how to teach and scaffold learning for their students. Instead, they just need to pick up a curriculum manual, open to the current week and follow the given procedure. Teachers may find it challenging to concentrate on meeting the needs of individual students when they are being pressured to cover a specific chapter or lesson on a specific day. Assessment should drive the teachers instruction. Instead some teachers are forced to follow minute to minute instructions of a lesson with no possibility of differentiation or variation. I am fortunate to wor kfor an administrator who expects teachers to meet the needs of their students first and foremost. Rather than reading scripted lessons from the teacher manual, teachers should be learning how to engage their students in hands-on, meaningful, and developmentally appropriate activities -- activities that will scaffold student learning and help them think and grow. While programs do ensure consistency among classrooms they can not capture the essence of emergent curriculum and dont fully utilize an outstanding teachers knowledge base. I wish more funding would be spent on developing outstanding teachers and training teachers on best practices and less spent on purchasing and training related to canned curricula. I find it ironic that states are increasing the standards for teacher licensure, but teaching positions require teachers to thinkless and depend more upon books to tell them what to teach, when to teach it, and precisely how teach it. So what does that leave the so called professional left to think about?