Chapter 2

Sarah Petersen
Reflection/Chapter 2

1. The focus of Learning Communities is to have everyone who have the same goals and attitudes in the academic scene, to come together as one. The main point of doing this is to make sure everyone is collaborating and everyones' ideas are shared to others. It builds leadership in schools between the faculty members.

2. The benefits of Learning Communities are that everyone is sharing what they think. It provides a deeper connection to learning, which means that the context is more meaningful to the teachers and the students when things are taught. Since they are sharing their thoughts and ideas to other faculty members, it allows the others to help that teacher out on what they should fix or what is working. Other benefits include: decreased teacher isolation, increased commitment to the mission, shared responsibility, more powerful learning and a higher likelihood of fundamental, systemic change.

3. Learning Communities affect teachers in a more positive than negative way. It increases their engagement when teaching to the class because if the other faculty members agree with their lesson plans, then they know they are doing something right and then they are excited to teach the class.

4. Learning Communities affect students in a positive way bucks the teachers meet to find ways to improve the learning of the students. The teachers come together to find the students who at-risk and finding ways to help them improve in the classroom. These teachers who are in the Learning Communities have a mission to help each and every student to the best of their ability, so their motivation to help them is obvious, which gives the students courage.

5. Some components for shared vision that are included in Learning Communities are: to ensure that students learn, create a classroom culture of collaboration for school improvement, and focus on results. These are the goals for all the teachers in the classroom.

6. These concepts relate to our project because the three of us have to collaborated and come together with our ideas. We are all sharing our ideas about our topic (Staying Healthy) for our concept map and then other things we will do later in the semester.