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Professional Learning Groups
Educators make their careers out of sharing knowledge and skills with young people and therefore must believe that anyone can always learn and improve in whatever they are undertaking. At a boarding school, education extends well beyond the classroom into the athletic fields, dining hall, and dormitories as adults interact with students in all manners of situations and roles. The challenge in this model is to also provide time and opportunities for the adults to continue to grow as professionals, so that they can learn and improve in what they are doing.
Westminster faculty partake in all manners of external professional growth activities, from conferences to serving on commissions to attending graduate school, but professional development that is embedded in the fabric and rhythms of our community is more accessible and engages more faculty members than anything that happens away from campus.
This principle sparked the creation of the Veteran Teachers Seminar by Todd Eckerson in the 1990s which morphed into our current Westminster Teaching Initiative (WTI) in 2010. WTI still provides teachers a forum to voluntarily come together each week and share ideas about a pedagogical topic. Starting in 2011, the annual Westminster Teaching Symposium takes this concept a step further by inviting other area educators to our campus for a morning of reflection on a topic and the sharing of best practices. This March, the symposium will be bringing education thought leader Grant Lichtman to campus to discuss how to imagine and realize meaningful change in an institution.
We began a Professional Learning Group (PLG) program this fall as a mechanism to regularly bring together all 95 faculty members to discuss ideas and best practices of our profession in a structured but conversational manner. Our first topic involved a role that engages two-thirds of our faculty, which is advising. The advisory system is central to the mission of the school, as the advisor meets frequently with and helps an advisee navigate the challenges, both formal and informal, that he or she faces while at Westminster. In reflecting on the importance of this role and how it might be done effectively, Westminster faculty draw on their experiences as advisors but also as parents and friends, allowing every faculty participant to contribute to the conversation, even those that do not advise. Each PLG is composed of a collection of faculty of varying experience and from different departments within the school, so these meetings also serve as a way to build and strengthen relationships between adults in the community who might not have as much cause to collaborate.
Each of the fourteen PLGs met two to three times during the course of the trimester to discuss specific questions related to our advisory system; a scribe summarized their discussion for the Dean of Faculty, who subsequently reflected back a summary of all the discussions with the faculty. These conversations ultimately resulted in the creation of a practical guide for advisors, which supplements the guidelines we already had in the faculty handbook, and the community of adults is that much more primed for engaging effectively and intentionally with our students throughout the school year.
Our winter PLG is focused on assessment, with the goal of reflecting on the standards and methods we use to challenge and critique our students. This work will begin with the same groupings of faculty members as we had in the fall but will then continue with department meetings for specific implementation ideas. In the spring, the topic will be on backward design and strategizing on how to build effective programs, whether academic, extracurricular, or involving another aspect of school life.
Westminster is a dynamic, supportive community for students and adults alike, and the Professional Learning Group initiative is another way that we are intentionally building on our strengths.
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Simsbury, Connecticut 06070
P. (860) 408-3000
F. (860) 408 3001
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In keeping with our support for a diverse community, Westminster abides by all applicable federal and state laws and does not discriminate on the basis of any protected characteristic, including race, color, religious creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national and ethnic origin, ancestry and/or disability in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship and loan programs, and athletic and other school-administered programs. Westminster admits students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the School.
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