Professional Learning Communities at Work, Term Paper

Total Length: 694 words ( 2 double-spaced pages)

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Principals are instrumental in sparking professional dialogue amongst teachers and encouraging critical self-reflection within the minds of individual teachers. All of these elements of reflection and reflexiveness are essential during staff meetings, for a true Professional Learning Community to function as it should.

A good principal is willing to provide an honest evaluation as to how the school is progressing in its mission and not allow the school's reputation to rest upon its past laurels. A principal functions as the strategic planner who determines the long-term goals of the school, and the short-term goals or benchmarks the school must reach to achieve those goals. By setting goals and helping generate a collective sense of mission for all persons at the school, principals create the necessary atmosphere at the school for more effective practices.

Principals also play an important role in facilitating professional development, as the ideal of teachers continuing to learn while they teach is a critical part of creating a Professional Learning Community.

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Principals can help foster such a community by encouraging new teachers to learn from mentor teachers, and by allowing older teachers to sharpen their skills by trying new things, and even to learn from equally experienced (or even less experienced) colleagues.

Although the principal traditionally assumes the role of a leader within the school, the principal must also know how to lead in a quieter fashion, and not merely give directives to others. A principal must be able to listen to the concerns of teachers, parents, and students, as well as provide guidance and mission and keep the goals of the school organization at the forefront of everyone's concern. The principal must thus be an extraordinary individual -- a person who can see the forest, or greater goals, without forgetting to tend the individual 'trees' or daily benchmarks and goals of professional student and teacher development.

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"Professional Learning Communities At Work " (2006, September 04) Retrieved June 20, 2025, from
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