Are Learning Communities effective?

An overdue post since superb conferences like GAFE and  BIT14 as well as amazing learning opportunities from our board the New Pedagogies for Deep Learning (NPDL) to the Learning Connection core team and our planning for December 10th face to face sharing with many colleagues from across the board.

Those three weeks in November have impacted my learning by curating more to my thinking. These thinking skills have confirmed and encouraged to deepen my practice with colleagues and my students.

On Saturday morning on twitter I came across this very pertinent tweet:

“@shighley: Found it! Of course, @ScottCapro had tweeted it! #BFC530 pic.twitter.com/Xiuxs8VKmJ” very pertinent @tmmelb Saturday
— MV Teachers (@MVTeachers) November 28, 2014

So true, without collaboration our growth is limited! These learning opportunities are always a result of collaborating face to face with colleagues. They have been a vaccination of thinking opportunities that jolts us to persevere and persist in our adventure with our students.

On Friday, being part of Learning Connection team and unpacking the 6 C`s  by Michael Fullan New Pedagogies for Deep Learning with my colleagues, tasks focused on the competencies of deep learning, These collaborative thinking tasks got the best out of us by developing a culture of collaborative thinking just like we are expected in our classroom.

The focus is always on the process of thinking skills not just the tools. We further explored concepts of tools, ideas on getting started and ideas for the classroom.  This culture of  collaborative learning takes determination, a culture of `yes`to collaboration, powerful pedagogical influences and seeking support with each other and empowering us to connect these pathways to our students.

As we expect from us to be learning partners with our students the same takes place at these meetings. Karen allows us to be in partnership in learning from and with each other as she permits for team collaboration of unpacking the thinking skills as she also becomes a learner with and from us.

@OttCatholicSB #ocsb #lcocsb Great start fwith Deep learning pic.twitter.com/n8KBFVvvBs @kmcevoy50
— Rola Tibshirani (@rolat) November 29, 2014

These cultures of learning opportunities are permissions provided for us to allow us to take risks with our learning giving and taking back to our colleagues at school as well as our students where the transformational learning takes place.

7 ways to be grateful like a leader: http://t.co/ySseyJYo7L pic.twitter.com/rf9qYRv4RB
— Dan Rockwell (@Leadershipfreak) November 29, 2014

As learning leaders where are we on these daily leadership journeys? How are we being grateful to collaborate and share our learning?

Most innovation occurs because of teamwork and collaboration; building off of on another’s ideas; #drivingthefuture
— JackieGerstein Ed.D. (@jackiegerstein) November 30, 2014

My learning is surely influenced on a daily basis from my colleagues at school, at the board office and colleagues from all school boards in Ottawa, Ontario and my large learning staff room twitter.

We need to always keep a positive learning perseverance, take those risks and keep connected for more learning practices and accept that learning is messy!

What new learning will I be trying with my students? I guess I need to keep publishing more of my posts rather than keeping them in draft. I should spend more time sharing the risk taking process of learning with my students.