November 28 PLC Meeting

Our group diverted from our normal PLC topic of discussion of IPI data and held a very meaningful discussion about the meeting Ronda is having with Department of Education Director, Dr. Jason Glass, and other arts educators this afternoon in Des Moines.

We discussed things like the economic development that the arts can (and do) bring to the state, as well as how even more of an emphasis on the arts (beginning at PreK on up) could foster even more economic development. Studies have shown that when businesses look to relocate or open in a new area, they will often first look at a family friendly community with a strong arts base, such as community theater, band or arts center, as well as strong arts programs within it's schools. (On a related, but side note...We talked about a number of the previous graduating valedictorians and salutatorians and noted that nearly all of them were a leader in one of the arts areas in our school.)

November 14 - PLC Meeting

We reviewed the article e-mailed out by Mr. VanderPol on November 2, "Five Dysfunctions of a Professional Learning Community" (http://whatworks.wholechildeducation.org/blog/five-dysfunctions-of-a-professional-learning-community/#.TrFPCZtFKA4.gmail)

Dysfunction #1: Lack of Norms

Our PLC does have norms, but perhaps they need to be revisited more regularly or be more detailed.

Dysfunction #2: Lack of Team Goals

Our PLC has clearly defined goals. We feel that we need to either focus on one content area (or one teacher's work) at a time or have longer lengths of time to focus our work on more than one.

Dysfunction #3: Lack of Trust

We feel that we are cohesive and are not afraid to bring our problems to the group and help one another problem solve concerns in our content areas.

Dysfunction #4: Lack of Communication

Something that might be beneficial is that we all comment on the blog entries as things arise. With PLC members in two different buildings, we don't always have a common start time for our PLC. Ronda will forward e-mails from Mr. VanderPol to Heidi and Bev; Heidi will forward e-mails from Mrs. Miller to Ronda to disseminate to Emily and Andrew.

On a related, but slightly separate note, we miss seeing the agenda and minutes from the SIT meetings this year. We would like to have more information about the team's topics of discussion and at how decisions are determined. We discussed that there is not a fine arts content area representative on the team.

Dysfunction #5: Lack of Essential Learning Outcomes

Our PLC could possibly be used as a time for "up-downs" between the elementary and middle school in our content areas to share information about student skill ability levels.

After discussing the article, Emily and Ronda shared that they were unable to attend a scheduled IPI training in Forest City last week. Mr. VanderPol is looking for other training opportunities. We believe it will be helpful to have members of the fine arts content staff trained in IPI.

October 31 PLC meeting

Present: Boquet, Dirks, Leverton, Sternhagen, VanHoorweghe

Absent: None

We discussed at length our Career Development Plans. We have differing data about how Plans are being written at the elementary and secondary buildings. Not all of us have been directed by our respective administrator to tie our Plan into our PLC work, even though after sharing our Plans with the group, we see how the individual plans do tie to our PLC work.

Emily and Ronda are scheduled to attend IPI training at Forest City on Thursday, November 10. We feel that this will help us better understand the process of "coding" in regard to the Fine Arts content areas. We will be reporting back to our PLC about what we learned and how we can apply that knowledge to our PLC work.

We also entertained a lengthy discussion about our scheduling concerns for next year.

October 17 PLC Meeting

Due to the time that the elementary BLT dismissed, the elementary members of our PLC were unable to join us for the PLC time today. Andrew, Emily and Ronda worked on Curriculum Manager in their absence.

PLC Meeting 10/3/11

Today we worked on accessing Curriculum Manager and updating content. We helped one another through rough spots and problem solved some areas we were unfamiliar with.

(*Bev...here's the answer to your comment from our last PLC meeting!)

Renorming our PLC

Since this is a new school year, we have gone through setting things up and redeveloping our norms.
•Timekeeper = Heidi
•Record keeper/Blogger = Ronda
•Team Name = GC Fine Arts PLC (name has been changed, but the web address stays the same)
•Meeting Place = Ronda's room
•Norms = Be on time, Stay on task, Finish on time, Treats welcome

Questions to be answered...
1. What do we want to achieve? (Goal) To analyze teaching strategies and/or individual units that we use in the Fine Arts areas and to educate the K-12 staff and/or IPI trained staff about the level of engagement we perceive to be going on in our classrooms.

2. How are we going to achieve this? (Plan) Each of us will analyze teaching strategies and/or individual units that we use in the our classrooms in regard to the level of engagement we perceive according to Dr. Jerry Valentine's guidelines.

3. How can I contribute? (Role)
We can each contribute by completing analyzing teaching strategies and/or individual units that we use in our classrooms.

4. What will I get out of this? (Reward) Each of us will be more keenly aware of the level of engagement occurring in our classrooms.

1/31/11 PLC Meeting

Members present: Andrew, Bev, Emily, Heidi, Ronda

Everyone will post what they have been doing in regard to reading strategies employed in their classrooms.

We did not attend the Read-Aloud Webinar due to no money available for time spent outside the school day to attend.

We used the rest of the time working in Curriculum Manager since we are all very behind in entering what we have been teaching in all of our classes.