Learning Together/Developing Community :: Collaborative Learning Centers Project

Learning Together/Developing Community

Collaborative professional development was a major strand in the CLC Project. School-based Professional Development Teams, monthly cross-school Teacher Leadership meetings and project-wide Forums served as the most important arenas for professional development efforts. Over time a professional and personal "community of learners" grew around these structures.

The Professional Development Teams (PDTs) were the core of the CLC project. Each school formed one to three teams comprised of teachers and, in most cases, a university faculty member. These PDTs met regularly to plan and implement professional development activities related to standards-based learning. PDTs varied in organization, areas of interest and in the professional development model they implemented. When possible, university students assigned to these schools participated in team activities.

The CLC Project fostered teacher leadership in many ways. Monthly meetings for PDT teacher leaders were an important structure for leadership development. As the project developed, other less formal arenas for professional growth emerged as well.

Project-wide forums provided opportunities for learning about best practices and standards-based initiatives in various content areas. Over the course of the three years, the forums allowed all members of the CLC learning community--teachers, administrators, university faculty and students, parents and CTC staff--to network, discover each others' work, and develop a cross-school identity with the CLC project.

At both NEIU and Roosevelt faculty members involved in CLC formed university teams that met regularly, to support efforts in the partner schools. The NEIU University Team and the Roosevelt University Team shared similar purposes: to support the efforts of the professional development teams in the partner schools, to support best practice, both in partner schools and in the college preservice program, and to foster the establishment of learning communities among faculty in the schools and universities, among students, between faculty and students, and across partner schools.