Chapter 2 - Creating a Professional Learning Community

     The focus of learning communities lies primarily in collaboration amongst teachers in order to create a new and positive learning experience for students and teachers alike. Learning communities lean away from a traditional teaching environment in which a teacher is isolated to his or her classroom, and encourage teachers to work together, provide feedback, and develop new and more effective ways of teaching. The overall goal is to help students learn in the best ways possible.
     The benefits of learning communities are vast. Not only are teachers pulled from the isolation of a classroom (as in a traditional setting), but teachers can socialize and brainstorm ideas with one another. Students benefit from more specialized and revised lesson planning when teachers can use experience, opinion, and insight to fuel their lesson planning. A sense of shared responsibility amongst faculty can ignite a new or rekindled passion for teaching and seeing students succeed. From just a few initial benefits of this sense of community, positive outcomes can accumulate for both students and teachers.
     There are some potential bumps in the road for learning communities. When teachers collaborate and use the same ideas, the assignments for students are similar; if students across grades and classrooms are working on the same material, cheating and copying can occur. It's important to pay close attention to student assignments and look for these patterns to avoid these kind of habits. The most important outcome of learning communities for students is that they receive the best instruction with the best absorption of knowledge. 
       In order for shared vision to be a part of learning communities, some amount of agreement must be in place amongst peer teachers. A project will flow best when all teachers have a shared interest in it, and all criteria are being met for the students (Standards, curriculum guidelines, etc.). It's best to maintain as much objectivity as possible and make sure that feedback is well meant and well accepted in order for learning communities to maintain focus and positive energy.
     This chapter related to our topic (local history) primarily because we are working as a group to create a project. In order to work together, we must provide each other feedback and accept each others' opinions. As a overall focus, we need to maintain our goal of creating a project that will inspire us to use the tools we are learning now to do the same for our future students.