In my experience with education, collaboration has been VITAL! As a new teacher I have had to rely on and bounce ideas off of others who have more experience. Professional learning networks are extremely helpful to all teachers. As a new teacher, I may have ideas that are new and different, while experienced teachers could have ideas that have worked for years. Either way, success in my classroom has only been possible with the aid of various professional learning networks. I am thankful to be a part of Classroom 2.0, the Facebook group Positively Pre-K, and also Solution Tree's PLC. Classroom 2.0 is a place where educators can observe an participate in conversations and network about implementing different technologies and medias into the classroom. Our classrooms need to be accessible to the 21st century student and this network is a great place to get ideas for that! The Facebook group I am a part of, Positively Pre-K, has been a place where over 70,000 Pre-K teachers from across the world can collaborate and help one another out. My district and campus are big supporters of PLC or Professional Learning Communities. Over the summer, I had the chance to attend the PLC conference where thousands of educators met in San Antonio and we got to learn and support one another in various breakout sessions. As I said, my district loves PLC and because of that every week we get an hour to meet with our grade-level team and our support staff to collaborate and help one another. We review data and how we are teaching certain things in order to give all of our students the best chance of success. This is going to sound bad, but when I started teaching, I was told to "steal whatever you can" which meant that if something is working for another teacher, use it, whether that is a resource, a way of teaching, or even a certain lesson. Obviously, take the ideas and make them yours but this has been something that has helped tremendously. I am lucky to work in a school with 7 other Pre-K teachers, which is rare, so we get to collaborate all the time.
Classroom 2.0 https://www.classroom20.com/
Postively Pre-k https://www.facebook.com/groups/468184299952032/
Solution Tree https://www.solutiontree.com/our-solutions/plc-at-work
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