PLC Community of Practice 2023
Why does our Community of Practice matter?
Vaux Big Picture Learning was the first to launch a school-wide expansion with a faculty presentation led by their CoP teachers, Andrea Barnes, Kathleen Butts, Persia Ali, Kelly Wilson, Robbie Marsden and Jennifer Johnson on May 19, 2023.
In September 2022 PLC - with funding from the John Templeton Foundation - partnered with Inquiry Schools, and Dr. Joseph South, Chief Learning Officer at ISTE and principal at the Learning Accelerant to create a Community of Practice (CoP). In this two-year project, teachers from seven schools are implementing or training to implement a new advisory curriculum that is designed to help students identify and take steps toward realizing their purpose. There is space for three more schools. If you’re interested, please contact Jen Brevoort at (jennifer@phlcollab.org).
Implementing cohort
Building 21
SLA-Beeber
SLA-Center City
String Theory School
The U School
Training cohort
Vaux Big Picture HS
The Workshop School
After a successful year, It’s a wrap!
Thank you to all of the talented and tireless educators who participated in PLC’s Purpose Driven Community of Practice. Our CoP is a collective of teachers across seven PLC schools who are learning about how to maximize advisory time to help youth explore purpose and develop expertise in real world learning settings. This year our teachers met 15 times to plan lessons, collaborate to help students put their purpose in action, and provide support to one another.
Our CoP teachers believe in this work. Teachers have shared that:
The resources shared in this project are comprehensive, easy to use and worthwhile for implementation in advisory
They appreciated the opportunity to try out the curriculum before it goes school-wide
This project has made the school’s abstract values tangible
Why does this matter?
Here’s what Robbie Marsden, CoP participant and teacher at Vaux Big Picture Learning had to say:
“I really do believe that helping each advisee explore their purpose will be a game changer for our advisory model. It is a small shift, but something profound that can evolve over time, and can create shared language amongst advisories.”
What do students and teachers actually do?
This year teachers worked to help students uncover and describe their purpose in advisory. Many students created a purpose statement like the sample statements from Jennifer Johnson’s classroom at Vaux Big Picture Learning below:
“As a young single parent of a beautiful daughter, my purpose in life is to combine my strengths in leadership, accountability and responsibility, with my love for spending time with my family and traveling to help the homeless find resources for survival.”
— Alexius
“As a young black man, my purpose in life is to combine my strengths in being a good listener, reflective and charming with my love for supporting those that I love and giving more than I take to showcase my creative skills to the world through my photography.”
— Donnel
“As a smart young black girl in the U.S., my purpose in life is to combine my strengths in making people happy, combined with my love for positive vibes and space to be creative, I hope to make a huge contribution to the world through my future science research.”
— Amirah
Once students articulate their purpose, teachers in the CoP work with students to identify opportunities at school, at home, online, and in the community to develop knowledge, skills, experiences, and relationships that help them put their purpose in action.
There’s more to come!
Our CoP teachers believe in this work. Here’s what teachers have said:
“The resources shared in this project are comprehensive, easy to use and worthwhile for implementation in advisory.”
“They appreciated the opportunity to try out the curriculum before it goes school-wide.”
“This project has made the school’s abstract values tangible.”
Next school year teachers will continue to pilot purpose curriculum, draft lessons on expertise and scale this work to additional classrooms. In addition, a select group of teachers will even work throughout the summer to build resources for their colleagues.
Each school CoP team has slightly different goals for scaling this work and each group of teachers is thoughtfully preparing to partner with colleagues to lead this set of healing centered practices in their schools.